Shari Dunbar Boyer
I long for us to remember the power of ceremony to create meaning in our lives
Shari Dunbar Boyer is a ceremonialist and trained herbalist. She has been studying plant medicines, natural healing modalities, and the use of ceremony in modern and traditional cultures for over a decade. Shari wrote the Book of Modern Ceremony as a way to encourage all types of people to bring ceremony back into their lives.
Shari came to ceremony after a long career in marketing. Seeking ways to create more meaning and connection in her life and her community, Shari realized that very little was written about ceremony outside of religion and history. She believes each of us descends from a culture that practices ceremony, and invites us to rediscover our birthright by creating simple ceremonies for everyday events.
Shari lives with her husband, Chris, two young adult sons, Tristan and Dylan, and 2 dogs on a suburban farm in Altadena, California.
Want to know the whole story?
I grew up in Southern California, playing outside on the streets of Long Beach, California, as we all did back then, the daughter of 2 school teachers, who were babies themselves when they had me. My parents made a pact with each other that if they were going to raise their kids in Los Angeles, they would use their long summer vacations to take the family away to wild places.
So, I spent all my childhood summers traveling with my family in our Jeep Cherokee, with a Prowler trailer pulled behind us, across the western United States: Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado. My days were completely unstructured. After breakfast I would set out with my dog and wander the landscapes outside the campground we were in. I would sing, make up stories, lie in a field, and just be. At the time I resented being taken away from the beach life my friends were enjoying back in Southern California, and being carted off to “backwards” locations like Kalispell, Montana, and Bend, Oregon. But these long, free, summers formed my core completely, and only now do I realize how important they were in forming my relationships with Nature.
Back home, I excelled at school, using my natural talents to rise to the very top of my very large public high school class (meaning I didn’t really learn about working hard). I was accepted at Stanford, and somehow my parents found a way to cover the exorbitant tuition on their teachers salaries. I am forever grateful to them for prioritizing my education over their comforts.
In my first years at Stanford I did just fine academically, but my biggest growth came from meeting other students who were so very different from me. My first and (still) best friend was from New York City, and traversed campus in thigh high black suede boots, in stark contrast to the standard student uniform of tennis shoes and sweatpants.
When I spent my junior year abroad, I had the opportunity to grow and expand my horizons. There is nothing for putting your country and your life in perspective like leaving it. When I returned to campus for my Senior year, I dove into my studies with new vigor, taking my first feminist theory classes which allowed me to write and speak for the first time in my own voice, rather than the objective third person. This was a revelation to me. I had not known until then that my voice and my opinion were of any value. I had always been a rabid journal writer, but writing academic papers in the first person? This was new!
After Stanford, I got on the corporate professional track, and rode it for a long time. I had a series of jobs in marketing at the world’s largest CPG (consumer product goods) companies, and learned how to market shampoo, chocolate and beverages. Exciting right? By all external measures I was “successful”. My parents were thrilled that I was earning a whopping $35,000 a year, a lot for a single girl in the early 1990s.
I didn’t last too long in the corporate world, and after a few years left to join a startup company also in the marketing space. Here I learned about being passionate about your job, and caring about those you work with. I had incredible mentors in the business founders. I lived a very fun life as a young single person with a great job, great pay, and freedom. We were lucky to sell this company after 10 years, giving me a nice payday in my early 30s.
Here was an opportunity to pursue my true passions. I had some cash from the Imagitas sale, and I now had a husband and 2 young sons. What a great opportunity to take some time to get back to my roots, to step off the business track.
In a way I did. Instead of taking another job at a company, I agreed to help start a marketing agency with my husband. My intention was to help get it going, and then to step away. 15 years later, I finally did. As CEO of Good Solutions Group, I used to call myself the “accidental CEO” because I never intended to spend 15 years building and caring for a business, but as I look back I realize GSG also cared for us. (Yes, a business can care for you, but that’s another story).
What followed was a series of forays into worlds and jobs that I now can appreciate prepared me for where (and who) I am now. I started a small natural wellness business. I became the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at a cannabis company, and then a non-profit that advocates for psychedelic assisted therapy. Moving on from each of these endeavors stung a little bit, but in hindsight I can see how each experience shaped me. Made me ready.
Ready for what? Well that’s the funny part.
Ready to be Me.
The me that I was pretty well acquainted with when I was running around the woods of Oregon on my own during the summers as a teenager. When I was backpacking through Europe during my Junior year of college with no itinerary. The me that showed up when I slowed down and listened. The me that carries all of the answers and medicine inside.
For me it’s been a long road coming home to myself. Along the way I have gained some wisdom. This site and my work is an attempt to share what I have learned along the way. Not as a way of telling you what to do. NO! I would never assume that my knowledge is what you need. What I have learned is that you have all the wisdom you need inside you, just like I did. My goal is just to tickle it out of you. To lie in the grass and belly laugh or cry as we each discover the inner healer within us. To give you examples of how life can be without all the preconceived notions and structures. Without the “shoulds”. To show you that something as simple as sitting in circle with others can bring the most profound healing and wisdom to the surface. To remind you that play is our sacred responsibility.
I am so delighted to meet you here, in this garden of delight that we get to live in, that we call Mother Earth. Where we all have genius, love, and wisdom within. Where we each have a birthright to live a fulfilled, connected, meaningful life.