SOPHIA INSTITUTE
Waldorf Teacher Training and Adult Education Courses
Foundation Studies Courses in Anthroposophy and the Arts
NAVIGATION
Tamara Slayton (1950 - 2003)
Tamara Slayton, good friend, mentor, and colleague to many of us crossed the
threshold into the spiritual world Monday, June 30, 2003 at 7:53 p.m. She
was 53.
Tamara's multifaceted life included being a mother of five, an educator,
artist, author, group facilitator, entrepreneur, midwife to many projects,
and a catalyst for countless people awakening to their destiny in the
service of Anthroposophia.
Tamara was foremost an artist, with an artist's keen and penetrating
perceptibility that served her in seeing through the underlying dynamics of
human beings and social situations. This enabled her to pierce superficial
appearances and get to core issues, recreating life's challenges in artistic
forms that resulted in a sometimes staggering amount of activity. She took
on the task of bringing to consciousness issues that were difficult for
others to talk about such as sex, menstruation, money and death.
Tamara was candid about the colorful and challenging experiences of her
biography that motivated her to face life situations such as teen pregnancy,
bankruptcy, medical misinformation, and find ways to facilitate and nurture
others through the wending ways of life. Her creative and very human
approach to these issues as her life's work was indeed an inspiration to
many.
Over the
years, Tamara produced many artistically designed products, publications and
businesses in service of her broad and courageous aim to contribute to the
renewal of modern culture. She brought these topics to life through her art,
wit, and humor, and her ability to ask questions and listen with compassion.
Her favorite activity was facilitating groups to new, unchartered territory
by orchestrating conversation. Those who witnessed Tamara in this agile
social skill will heartily agree that she brought many people to spiritual
science and research that may not otherwise have been able to find a living
relation to it.
In the early 1970s Tamara was a Fertility Awareness Consultant for the State
of California, where she consulted with hundreds of adults seeking a natural
way to work with their reproductive processes. She went on to illustrate and
co-publish Hygieia: A Woman's Herbal by Jeannine Parvati 1978
Freestone Publishing Company. Tamara founded Scarlet Moon, a manufacturing
business for the first natural menstrual Products-Glad Rags. And then, in
1984, she founded the Menstrual Health Foundation, which would be her answer
to the need for supporting women in gaining a deeper understanding and
respect for their procreative cycles. She later collaborated on the book
Conscious Conception: Elemental Journey Through the Labyrinth of Sexuality
by Jeannine Parvati Baker and Frederick Baker 1986 Freestone Publshing
Company. At the close of 1989, Tamara authored and published Reclaiming
the Menstrual Matrix, a Workbook for Evolving Feminine Wisdom.
Also in the 1980s, while she was still a young parent, Tamara met Waldorf
Education. Here she found a teaching methodology that inspired her to use
her artistic, social, and teaching skills in a collaborative learning
environment that honored the developing consciousness of the child through
the cycles of life. Her work in counseling adults through honoring their
rhythms in the evolving cycles of life found fertile soil in the
Anthroposophic thought she now undertook.
In 1990, at 40 years, Tamara's deepening interest in Waldorf Education and
Anthroposophy led her to the position of Development Coordinator of the
Summerfield Waldorf School. She continued to oversee the production and
sales of cloth menstrual pads and also developed the Coming of Age Project.
This Project was Tamara's way to support Waldorf communities in the
fostering of self-esteem, self-awareness, and self-care in young girls
during pubescence. Over the next 12 years, she authored and published
Little Cycle Celebration Book, Dear Daughter, Cycle Meditation
Cards, Fertility Cycle Charts, and I Find My Star, a Main Lesson Outline.
A Coming of Age Teacher Training began and continued through 1999 during
which time Tamara also authored Cosmic Cycles, Earthly Rhythms and
the research paper Free the Waldorf School- Pre-Financed Education.
Tamara Slayton struggled to answer what she understood as our modern social
crises by courageously taking initiative toward community with those karmic
partners who showed up in her path. In the early 90's she was a founding
member of the Sebastopol Members Group of the Anthroposophical Society with
close colleagues who supported a practical and inspired approach towards
Inner Development, Community Building and the Festival Cycle of the Year.
This dynamic group included Hank Passafaro, Rose Lieta Passafaro, William
and Bonnie River-Bento, Eve Hardie, and Robin White among many others. In
each of these relationships, Tamara found a partner in an aspect of life
inspired by Anthroposophy and individuality that gave rise to many forms of
activity, including product design to support the inner life, business forms
to honor the three-fold nature of the human being, artistic and beautiful
publications to make accessible the world of stars, festival life, and the
rhythms of working with the dead, to follow their guidance toward community
development.
In 1992 Tamara rented a space in downtown Sebastopol for her Womankind shop,
which also housed the Menstrual Health Foundation. During the day it was a
retail, wholesale, and mail order shop with products, programs and
publications to support women to develop a soul relationship to their
monthly creative cycle. The shop also became an active social hub for other
events. In one area of the space, Dr. Dudney, an Anthroposophical doctor
would see clients. In the evenings and weekends, Tamara sponsored many guest
lecturers and teaching programs on varied themes in Anthroposophy. A
Christmas and Holy Nights Journal/Workshop by the Passafaros was hosted here
which continued to be a source of inspiration and time of renewal for
Tamara.
Following this fertile time, with her children growing through adolescence,
with all her relationships and experiences as her foundation, Tamara met the
concept of associative economics, and the work of Christopher Houghton-Budd.
From this point until the end of her life, Tamara remained devoted to the
ideas of an associative economy as taught by Christopher, and incorporated
it as teaching in her dynamic way as she began touring the country, using
her gifts to further translate her life's experiences into a lively learning
process for all. Her facilitated meetings around the themes of sexuality,
death, festival life and economic life were often accompanied by beautiful
and artistic presentations and practical, artfully designed tools to engage
those in attending to a creative involvement in learning. Tamara worked with
Christopher in creating colorful and artistic ways to enliven the
presentation of these new thoughts in economics, and she worked diligently
to introduce him in the communities where she had a foundation of
relationships through her own work.
During this period of the '90s, Tamara said she felt as though she were
gathering into conversation and activity all those who shared this part of
the vision, which she recognized as the true and healing form for our time.
She attended many of Christopher's workshops, and moreover worked with him
to plan many of these events, working diligently to spread the word about
associative economics and open the possibility for Christopher to introduce
his work in the communities she had already touched.
A culmination of the potential of Tamara's experience came through
collaboration with social artist, Mary Adams and Patricia DeLisa as they
worked intensely with Tamara, striving to find the suitable business form to
free their collaboration in teaching, design, events coordination and
product development. For awhile, their activity together came under the
umbrella of Cycles, Inc., a corporation Tamara developed with Susan Gravelle
as the for-profit project of her Initiative for the Renewal of Modern
Culture and the Menstrual Health Foundation. Jane Parker was also actively
and dynamically involved in carrying the vision of what such an initiative
could become.
In 2000, Tamara began to deal with the cancer in her breast, which by then
she had had for several years. Her first intent was to treat it
Anthroposophically and make of her journey an artistic learning experience
for others. She carried on with work and travel, incorporating this
experience of illness as much as possible into her process. In another
healing impulse for the culture, she was asked to be the artistic director
of the New Soul Calendar, first published in 2001 by Seven Roses
Publications. The New Soul Calendar was an attempt to renew Steiner's
original Calendar of 1912/13 for awakening to the thresholds of time as a
path of initiation. In early 2003, she enrolled in school, to pursue a
degree in economics and sustainable community development.
Her latest book, co-authored with Linda Knodle and Anne Marie Fryer was
published in February 2003. Linda and Anne-Marie, two Waldorf teachers of
long standing, worked closely with Tamara through the 90's and into the
present to bring new ideas and curriculum into Waldorf communities. The
title she used, I Find My Star, a Curriculum Guide, subtitled 'An
Art-Filled, Community Building Approach to the Inner and Outer
Changes of Puberty and Adolescnce, derives from a much-loved prayer for
strength by Rudolf Steiner, a prayer that touches the soul mood of Tamara's
journey through life. "The soul's longings are like seeds…" the prayer
begins, and in the life of Tamara Slayton, we witness this longing, the
longing to bring into being a way of life worthy of the cosmic majesty, the
finding of one's star, that for her found its greatest expression in the
thinking cultivated by study, research and work in anthroposophy and
associative economics.
In March 2003, Tamara specifically ceased all activity and turned from the
world to herself. Through the wealth of relationships she had cultivated,
Tamara found a warm and supportive community that included among them her
son and daughters, Zach, Lorene and JoAnn Allen, Jane Parker, Caine Rose,
Robin White and Eve Hardie. Many of those who came to Tamara's aid at this
time had indeed been inspired by her to administer to life in ways to which
she introduced them.
Tamara's dream had been to create an educational, Anthroposophical
eco-village with a foundation in associative economics that would showcase
the breadth and depth of anthroposophy in action. She made a modest
beginning of this on the four-acre property in Sebastopol, CA on which she
was living. She called it Natura Farm and School, and it was here she died,
surrounded by family, friends and many people from all over the country and
across the seas, loved ones and supporters who came to be with her, care for
her, and share last moments of life with her.
Tamara Slayton's life came to fulfillment at the season of St. John's. As
related by those closest to her in the final week, she decided to cease
medical interventions and desired to return to her home to be supported by
friends and family on Monday, June 23, the eve of St. John's. An esoteric
understanding of this festival reveals that in it the human soul experiences
a full out breath into cosmic spaces, there to offer itself as vessel for
future work and deeds, received from on high as seed in the St. John's
season. One week later, on June 30 at 7:53 p.m., as Venus followed the Sun
over the horizon to the west out Tamara's window, she crossed the threshold
out of this life.
The sun at Tamara's birth was in the constellation of Pisces with Leo on the
ascendant. Through the work of friend Ellias Lonsdale in his meditations on
the symbols of the zodiac, a soul quality of the degree of her birth sun
comes to light that is a striking image of Tamara's life gesture. The image
is of Palm Trees Laden with Dates. This is to be understood as the symbol of
'soul faculties. Precious jewels carried from before held intact and
inwardly rooted within. Absolutely saturated with psychic faculties, inward
understandings, and special feelings for the whole of existence. All of this
is held under and accessed when most deeply needed.. . It is to be a source,
an oasis in yourself-to have so much to offer that it can never be
exhausted.' (from Inside Degrees by Ellias Lonsdale, North Atlantic
Books).
Tamara Slayton was, in a word, astonishing. As friend and mother she is
dearly missed, as inspiratrice, she lives on in what we make of those ways
she touched us.
Tamara always spoke with gratitude for all the economic contributors who
made her work possible over the years. Know that your contributions continue
to live on in the hearts of all those whose lives she touched.
Written in collaboration by and Rose Lieta Passafero, Robin White, Linda
Knodle and Mary Stewart Adams.