Hi! I’m Sarah Teresa Cook.
I love bugs, hiking, game shows, and not drinking alcohol. I love that my sun & moon are both in Taurus. I love having two middle names: Teresa Leonora. I love the desert, the ocean, and I love getting tattoos.
I hold an MA in English, with emphases in poetics and creative writing, and a minor in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies.
I believe in borrowing lenses from the social services field, where I spent about 8 years in housing advocacy, youth services, and community mental health. I am both trauma-informed and strengths-based in my work.
People have described me as a “creative intuitive,” and “kind of like a family therapist for you and your creativity.” I like these descriptions! They feel true to me.
I spent a lot of time believing I would never be successful on my own terms, and that I wouldn’t be a real writer until I could check off certain boxes. But it was my own creativity, paired with mentorship, therapy, and other healing modalities, that brought me back to my full self and my real terms.
I trust that writing is always at least a little bit spiritual: you take your imagination, which lives in your body yet isn’t confined to it, and you use it to build and examine your tender self and all your weird, wonderful ideas. What else in life can provide us with medicine and play in such equal amounts? We put words on a page and, over time, come to inhabit our lives differently. Like magic! But also: like choice.
I live on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge, on Wasco and Wishram land, where I write For the Birds, a newsletter about neurodivergence, the writing life, and the natural world.
I teach part-time through Unrestricted Interested. I also host occasional workshops, and I co-facilitate a small group program with my witchy and very skilled friend.
Serious gratitude to paisley.jpg for the incredible Polaroid headshot.
