GUIDE PROFILE:  Dianne Timberlake
Offered in gratitude, by Elisabeth Dearborn

Dianne Timberlake, often known to herself simply as Timberlake, slipped out of one skin and into another when she quit her eighteen year-long job as a systems analyst to step fully into graduate work in counseling.  Dianne speaks of this transition and the first time she experienced inner imagery in 1984, "The animal guides showed up for me, picked me up, and said, This is your work!  I saw Issaquat, my forehead chakra animal, the first time I went into imagery.  He was a rainbow trout in a sparkling stream, who turned, looked at me directly, and told me his name.  He was wise and funny and the first to refer to me as ‘Timberlake'.  His purpose was to get me to lighten up.  Two years later he said it was time for him to go.  I resisted, but to no avail; he died. I felt much grief…but after that my heart animal ~ the cougar ~ began coming forward.  Only later did I see how the imagery mirrored my outer life; stepping out of the world of my head and onto the path of my heart. When my new head animal showed up, it was a wolf who was an old friend of the cougar.  That indicated to me that my head and my heart needed to be in relationship with each other."  

When asked about her connection with nature, Dianne shares her early experiences: "When I was seven, my family began camping every summer.  That first year my father held a ceremony around a campfire at night and taught us about the Great Spirit.  He instilled a sense of reverence and responsibility for the natural world.  When I was a teen, we hiked on Mt.Tamalpais nearly every weekend.  I learned then that when I was facing something huge, if I just took it to nature, I could get my perspective back.  Two hundred year old trees, or big stones, put my upset into the scale of things and I could get my perspective back.  That’s been the most fascinating idea of my life.”  As she speaks, I hear how clearly Dianne accesses her inner self, knows her own truth, and I sense the solidity of her stance as a woman and as a guide. 
 
I become curious about how this solid stance in deep imagery informs her now, and ask her about the deep imagery work that’s been her adult way of gaining perspective.  "I go in and ask for help. Since I have colleagues who do this work, I can ask for a deep imagery session with one of them and invite the animal guides in.  Training to do imagery work requires people do their own work," she tells me.  "It felt resonant with who I am.  I learned to be transparent, to do my own work in front of students, to self disclose when appropriate.”  I suddenly remember her leadership during Sweet Darkness last fall and her ease with self-disclosure.  I remember the sense of safety, strength and solidity that gave our group, making it so easy for each of us to deepen, explore, and become acquainted with our shadow.

She goes on, “I learned from the inside how imagery is really there for people.” 
The imagery has the power to take you exactly where you need to go.  There's no way to figure it out ahead of time.   t's a matter of opening up, letting it take you, and living it out afterwards.  Like turbulence in a body of water, it takes time to settle out..."  And, like Issaquat, she looks directly, moves with clarity, and enjoys the sparkling stream of life.  Thanks, Timberlake!, for the glimpse of your journey, inside and out, and for the deep responsibility and reverence you bring to your work as a guide and as a woman.