Welcome to this space dedicated to the power of stories in popular media. My name is Dori Koehler, PhD. I'm a mythologist specializing in American popular culture, Disneyland apologist, ritual maker, author, intuitive consultant, baking aficionado, a loving partner, and a soul friend to an amazing spaniel living in Santa Barbara, California.

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It's been both the pleasure and the journey of my life so far to learn about how human beings come together to make sense of the world through their stories, their practices, and through their cultural expressions.

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I've built this web space to apply that knowledge and help you learn more about how the stories and symbols you love have the potential to bring meaning to your life -- your stories can ground you, empower you, bring you joy, and help you find peace and healing. Stories, be they big ones like our social and spiritual identities or small ones like that movie you just saw and can't forget or the ones you tell yourself about yourself, can be powerful tools to transform our worlds.

 

I truly believe in the ability of archetypal images to transform the world around us ... they crystalize our imagination into physical form. They are the source of everything we create, including public policy. Our stories can make the world a better place if only we allow ourselves to see through the wisdom they have to teach us.

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This community helps you how to do that through:

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• Offering workshops that explore evolving depth psychological concepts

• Personalized intuitive counseling to support clients through life decisions

• Creating regular content on a myriad of topics through Patreon

• Streaming podcasts and posting blogs about myth and pop culture

• Crafting personalized rituals such as weddings, graduations, and other life transitions

• Personalized fashion consulting with my colleague Amos that combines archetypal theory with proven fashion expertise

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My Personal Mythic Journey

 

I was born in the year of the Star Wars in Los Baños, California to an agricultural family. My parents were raised in the subculture of California dairy farming such as it was in the early to middle 20th century -- both sides were deeply connected to their immigrant backgrounds, one from the Açores Islands of Portugal and the other from the Fries land of The Netherlands.

 

My mother is originally from the city of Artesia in Los Angeles County, and my father is from the town where I was born. He broke out of the original family business when he became a crop farmer -- largely a cotton farmer. When my parents were married, they blended their families and formed a strong alliance that still exists today. Mythically, I am a product of that thoroughly Californian agricultural experience -- of the north and of the south. Though in my heart I love working with the land, my true passion is and always has been storytelling.

 

When I was young, I would luxuriate under my desk with a sleeping bag and a flashlight reading (among other things) Judy Blume's fully fleshed out and narratively subversive stories, the adventures of Beverly Clearly's Ramona Quimby, the beach town soap of Francine Pascal's Wakefield twins, and the entrepreneurial joy of Ann M. Martin's The Babysitter's Club series. The characters from these books became some of my dearest friends. I learned from that personal experience that stories and the characters in the franchises we love help us learn who we are and develop who we might become.

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In 1995, I moved to Santa Barbara, California to attend Westmont College. I was 18 years old, fresh-faced off the farm. I thought Santa Barbara was the big city, a hilarious thing because my point of reference was that there were movie theaters here. My years at Westmont transformed my mind. I was challenged, and I bucked tradition at every turn.

 

In 1999, I earned my BA degree in English Literature with a focus on secondary education. After a short summer at home, I returned to Santa Barbara and took a job at a corporation. I met my husband Bruce, the absolute love of my life, in the summer of 2000. That solidified my choice to stay in Santa Barbara, and we were married in 2002.

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Shortly after we got married, I left my corporate job to work with Bruce in his landscaping business. His passion for creating beautiful spaces and lovingly producing grapes for wine continues to inspire me.

 

I wanted to change careers though and enter a graduate program, so off I went to search for my calling. I found it in 2006, when a dear friend mentioned Pacifica Graduate Institute. I'd never heard of the school, which intrigued me, as their main campus is about 5 miles from our house. I was hooked as soon as I read the curriculum of the myth program. By that autumn, I was enrolled, and in 2008, I received a MA in Mythological Studies with emphasis in Depth Psychology.

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As much as I LOVE Pacifica's myth program, I noticed a glaring hole in the program. Where, I wondered, was the study of contemporary American popular culture and contemporary American spirituality? It seemed to me to be an important topic to study if we are to tend the soul of the world. Subversive popular art? Yes. Mundane popular art like Disney, Marvel, and genre stories? No. And that made me commit even more.

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In 2012, I completed my Ph.D. My dissertation on Disneyland as a sacred space, a sacred temple to American mythology crystallized my belief that the stories all around us are sacred. As I continued to work on the topic and revise it for wider publication, I became even more convinced that all stories are sacred because they reflect the human imagination.

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In 2016, I joined the faculty at Southern New Hampshire University where I taught classes in Humanities, Fine Arts, Liberal Arts (that is application of different academic lenses, and Diversity. Working with students from all over the country has only made me more convinced that all our perspectives have a calling to be heard.

I'm currently working my way through an MFA in Creative Writing at SNHU. As part of that education, I will also receive a certificate in Professional Writing.

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All these experiences have led me to believe that I am called to work with people like you. I'm convinced that our experiences, our narratives deserve to be explored with dignity, whether they are stories of light or darkness, joy or pain, and whether they are life-giving, or whether they need to be processed and buried so we can access the archetypal images of rebirth. 

 

That's what it means to ensoul stories. And that's why I'm offering my services to you. The truth is that the stories that belong to us are our myths, which are the beginning of everything.

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