Welcome
Regal Heart

Hello and welcome.  I hope to hold space that supports our capacities to remember into and connect with our own goodness, wisdom and love, which also helps us act skillfully in the world.  Regal H(e)art is a name inspired by my great grandmother Cora Hartman and my grandmother Elizabeth Regalado.  

My name is Hillary Detamore (she/they). I'd like to share a bit about me so that you can get a sense of whether I might be a teacher you'd like to learn with. I'm a momme and have two kiddos who are 8 and 10 whom I co-parent with their dad, as a single householder and full time working person.  Momme was spelled this way one day and I loved it - spelled without the possessive mom-my but instead as a way of interdependence mom-me.  Together, we live on the unceded ancestral lands of the Steh-Chass people in Olympia, WA on Budd Inlet, the southern end of Puget Sound.  I work in the nonprofit sector and am an executive director of a small organization focused on intersectional racial justice.

I have mixed race heritage: white (German and northwestern European) and Asian (Filipino).  Since I was socialized as white while growing up in Virginia, and have white bodied privilege, much of my racial justice work is focused on uprooting the ways that white privilege shows up in my mind/heart, socialization, and in dominant culture spaces where I move and exist. As a person with mixed race heritage, I am also actively exploring how to reconnect with my ancestral lineages and heal from/stop the ongoing harm of colonialism. I have used mindfulness meditation extensively to support these aspects of my antiracist practice, which is ultimately focused on deep love and truth and being in skillful action in the world in a way that supports justice, collective healing, and liberation. 

I am also a volunteer with noda (no one dies alone) and sit/hold vigil with individuals as they transition through death.  I am increasingly interested in disrupting dominant culture norms that deny and hide death.  Instead, I'm learning how to hold sacred space for this part of our life, how to grieve in order to heal generational wounds and how to understand death as a gateway to deepening connection with life, community and belonging.  To further support this practice, I'm currently training to become a death doula and will also start chaplaincy training in 2022.  

Social justice, antiracism, parenting, wise leadership, birth, death, healing and loving are themes that are infused into my teaching and practice. 

I have been practicing mindfulness meditation since 2014 and was certified to teach in 2021 through the awareness institute's/sounds true mindfulness meditation teacher certification program led by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach.  While this certification, and my teaching, are situated in a secular context (non-religious) my personal practice has largely been, and is, rooted in Vipassana within the Theravada school of Buddhism. In this space, my primary teachers are Kamala Masters and Dr. Sean Feit Oakes who are long-time practitioner teachers in the Theravada lineage traditions of Southeast Asia.

With this grounding, while I am not a teacher of Buddhism, I do approach mindfulness meditation as a sacred practice, rooted in ancient tradition, that can cultivate a connection with our innate capacities to heal, help us reclaim our humanity through embodied experience and which can help us unbind from that which is harmful (individually, interpersonally and systemically) so that we can love wholeheartedly and wisely while also being engaged in the world.