What does it really mean to live a
full life?

My work resides mostly in the dreaming, designing and illumination of new systems.

 

What if your life were a remembering?

Not a race toward becoming, but a return?

A re-rooting?

A sacred reclaiming of what has always been true within you?

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My work is a tending place for this remembering.

And this space is an invitation, a threshold. A gentle place for re-membering.

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I am Lana Jelenjev, a community alchemist, a weaver of healing-centered ecosystems, a remembering body, and a gentle guide across thresholds.

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My life’s work is not just about what I do—it is about how I choose to be in the present moment. Rooted in the Filipino values of kapwa (seeing ourselves in our shared humanity) and pakikiramdam (deep, attuned sensing), I create spaces for people to reconnect with themselves, with each other, and to witness and appreciate what has always been sacred.

 

I come from a lineage of women who taught me to care deeply. Who navigated ruptures with grace. Who showed through their devotion and generosity what it means to be human, and these actions are forged into the marrow of my being—practices that would one day shape the way I hold space, lead movements, and design ecosystems rooted in healing.

 

As a child, I’d confidently tell others I wanted to become a doctor. Not because of the prestige, but because healing felt like a calling. Healing fascinated me. But the path called me elsewhere. Over time, that calling shapeshifted—from tending to my mother during her breast cancer journey, to working as a play therapist at the Philippine General Hospital, to serving children in underserved communities, to holding learning spaces across the world. Through grief. Through motherhood. Through cancer. Through migration. Through learning to make a home within myself, even when the outer landscapes kept shifting. All of these transition points made me realize I wasn’t meant to heal with scalpels or prescriptions. My medicine was something else—attunement, care, and deep presence. My healing work was never meant to be clinical. It was relational. Communal. Embodied.

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Each rupture became a rite of passage, ushering me into new realms of becoming. I’ve come to understand these transitions not as disruptions, but as sacred initiations inviting me to meet them with goodness, grace, and gratitude.

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After my first encounter with breast cancer, I devoted myself to understanding post-traumatic growth, self-fullness, and what it means to live a life of integration. That path led me into the worlds of trauma-informed practices, decolonization, polyvagal theory, and the science of co-regulation. I became a student of healing-centered engagement—learning from Dr. Shawn Ginwright, Dr. Resmaa Menakem, Dr. Acosta—and eventually came to articulate my own framework of healing-centered ecosystems.

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This is the thread that weaves through all I do: the belief that care, connection, community, and contribution are not luxuries. They are necessary for restoration and regeneration.

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And each passage deepened my commitment to create spaces where people can feel safe enough to soften, seen enough to stay, and resourced enough to find our agency to act. Re-rooting—again and again—has been my compass. It is both a personal and collective practice. In a world that often demands we move on or move faster, re-rooting calls us to scale deep, to attend to what lies beneath, and to honor the wisdom of our own becoming.

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In this practice of re-rooting, I tap into the ancestral wisdom and strengths that live in my body—reminders that I am never doing this work alone. I am part of a lineage, a continuum, a collective nervous system. The way I tend to my body, my boundaries, my communities, and my ecosystems is a fractal of what needs to be tended to in our society. My healing is not separate from the healing of the whole.

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This is why I write. Why I teach. Why I gather people in circles of courage and compassion. Why I co-create spaces where leaders can unmask, soften, and begin again.

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I want the people who find themselves here—leaders, visionaries, future ancestors—to feel settled. To feel that there is space here to breathe, to be, and to build. I want you to know that healing isn’t an endpoint; it’s a practice. A remembering. A re-rooting.

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You might know me as a strategist, speaker, facilitator, and author. But what I really do is hold sacred space for transformation—personal, communal, and systemic. I design for emergence, not perfection. I hold spaces for leaders, educators, young adults, and changemakers to step into their own healing—through reflection, co-attunement, and deepened awareness of their nervous systems and gifts. I do this through writing, workshops, keynotes, facilitation, and holding spaces. My frameworks are not formulas; they are invitations. My programs are not products; they are gentle provocations, nudging you to question deeply, act boldly, and embrace emergence with grace.

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Because what I know to be true is this: healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in relation. In witnessing. In pakikipagkapwa and pakikiramdam.

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This belief threads through all of my work, including the founding of Refugia.world—a digital sanctuary and collective learning space dedicated to nurturing healing-centered ecosystems. Refugia is where we explore what it means to tend to ourselves, our communities, and the Earth with care and imagination.

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It also grounds my co-leadership in the Neurodiversity Foundation and the Neurodiversity Education Academy,  where we advocate for strengths-based, healing-informed approaches to education and organizational culture. We create practical tools, courses, and communities that honor different ways of being, thinking, and relating—so that all neurotypes can thrive.

 

In my Substack, Living A Legacy, I write about rupture and repair. It is where I write from the in-between: the liminal, the layered, the deeply personal. There, I share the tender terrain of healing, the messy chaos of transitions, and what it means to live into one’s truth, even amidst uncertainty and change.

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My guiding inquiries are always evolving, yet they return to these:

• How do we re-source ourselves and each other?

• How do we design cultures that honor care, connection, community, and contribution?

• What becomes possible when we settle our bodies—and help others do the same?

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If there is a legacy I hope to leave, it is one of inner and outer resourcing. Of creating ripples of restorative practice and collective care. Of supporting people in reclaiming their cognitive, cultural, and character strengths—not just for individual flourishing, but for the rewiring of our collective nervous systems.

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I believe that leadership is relational, healing is interdependent, and legacy is best achieved through living, not just what's left behind.

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My deepest longing is for each person to live a legacy rooted not in performance but in presence. Not in over-functioning, but in wholeness. Not in masks, but in meaning.

So step into this space. Whether you carry decision-making power in your organization, are navigating the edges of your own becoming, or simply wish to co-create a more caring world—there is something here for you.

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This is not a place of demands or declarations. This space is an offering. If you're here, it’s not by accident. You are standing at the edge of something sacred.

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Welcome to the work of remembering. Of returning home to yourself.

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