Maria Yunker

About Me

Pondering people and their interactions, sometimes while prancing and pirouetting has been a lifelong pastime and has yielded this singular conclusion, we are plagued with misunderstanding. I had no idea what exactly I was going to do about it and like many of us I tried to find a way to contribute meaningfully to society. While in college one request for a back rub became many and after a change of schools, I eventually became a mobile masseuse, hustling with heart and hope to help heal. I soothed sore muscles and received people’s stories, sorrows, struggles, tragedies, and trauma all interwoven with their physical pain. I quickly realized that however much I kneaded those knots, it's their minds and hearts that are the knottiest.  Then like a prayer answered through a parenting group I was introduced to Nonviolent Communication (NVC) in 2005 developed by Marshall Rosenberg which took my contemplation to a whole new level of consideration and compassion. All the mistakes, misunderstandings, and miscommunications had a remedy, empathy!! I was infused with ideas, which birthed my own insights that I integrated into my purpose and approach to life, while also preparing a human for life on Earth on my own. For years I was a part of local efforts to organize workshops, lead practice groups, and find creative ways to spread awareness about NVC to my community. Then I felt a strong calling to create my own personalized approach to peacemaking using NVC as a wonderful tool to guide me. I infused my life’s accumulated experience, especially influenced by reading “Conversations with God” at 19 by Neale Donald Walsch, Margaret Starbirds’ “The Woman with the Alabaster Jar,” in my mid 20’s and more recently, “Your Resonant Self,” by Sarah Peyton to name just a few influential visionaries who have graced my life with guidance. I took all the knowledge, some turned wisdom and poured it into my words and art. Using multiple mediums, my own playful perspective, and an alliterative way with words, I created the work on this site. I am especially excited to share my video Peace, Please, which encapsulates the main themes of my work with music and imagery. In my day to day, I aspire to live out my values of equality, peace, compassion, consideration, and truth; all the flavors of Love, in all I think, say and do. To stay sane, release anxiety, recycle fear, generate love, and feel fabulous, I dance. Not as a performance, but as a prayer, I surrender to sound to shape the invisible.

my media