If Lisa Kennemur (MA Clinical Mental Health Counseling, 2021) ever writes a book about her life, it just might be titled From the Navy to Naropa. Following a 25-year career as a medical physicist/radiation health specialist in the US Navy, Kennemur was beginning to think about her retirement plans. Noticing that she felt her best when outside, she asked her therapist why therapy was done in an office instead of outdoors. Their discussion and a Google search led her to Naropa’s Wilderness Therapy program.
“I had never heard of Naropa. As I looked through the website, I found a course called Authentic Leadership. I thought, wow, what a concept!” She decided to enroll in the course to see whether Naropa would be a good fit for her. The two weeks she spent on campus with her cohort sealed the deal. “I was blown away at the connection I felt to these humans I had just met. They were real, open-hearted, generous, and kind. I felt at home and like I had found my people. They almost lost me when they asked me to pass a singing note in a circle of strangers, but even though I was horrified and terrified, I still felt safe enough to do it.”
At the time, Lisa thought she still had a few more years in the Navy. “I thought the timing would be 2020. I had planned to retire under the first female President of the United States, well we all know that didn’t happen. On November 9, 2016, I submitted my request to retire. I had served long enough and just could not see myself serving under a President who in my opinion had no morals and was only out to serve himself, not the people. I applied to Naropa in early 2017 and retired Oct 1, 2017.”
While she is grateful for her military career, it did leave some scars. She entered the military in 1993, just after President Clinton authorized “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” After meeting her partner in the Navy in 1994, she recalls, “We lived in fear that we would be found out and lose our careers. This meant that we didn’t talk about our weekends, our vacations, or bring each other to the office parties. It was like we didn’t exist in public. When my partner retired in 2001, she was unable to recognize me in her retirement speech where it is common to thank those who have supported you during your career. I was so sad sitting in the third row behind other family and friends.”
Things changed in 2011, when President Obama overturned Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. She recounts crying while reading an article in which Admiral Mullen (then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) lent his support to overturning the policy. “In that moment, I decided it was time to come out and serve openly as a lesbian. I recognized my partner in every speech I gave moving forward. I introduced her at the office and to my colleagues first as my partner and then as my spouse…. I ended my military career being out, being me, and being proud.”
She credits her studies in Transpersonal Wilderness Therapy with giving her the space to discover “what I really loved and what I was passionate about. I healed my own heart.” Having experienced such profound transition in her own life, she is now dedicated “to guiding people through transition using the rites of passage model.”
She stays connected to Naropa through her role as field instructor for the Wilderness Therapy Backcountry Intensive. She is also the program manager and rites of passage and quest guide at Somatic Wilderness Therapy Institute in Boulder, Colorado. She helps clients “connect with themselves, others, and the earth” through self-reflection and personal ceremony, interviews, and mentors, therapists, and healers wanting to expand their understanding of nature-based and somatic therapy skills, and administers the institute’s internship program.
She started working with Somatic Wilderness Therapy Institute as an intern. It was there that she met Katie Asmus, the founder and director of the Institute and a graduate of Naropa’s MA in Somatic Psychology. “She was one of my instructors and had a huge impact on influencing the work I wanted to do post-degree. The Transitions Throughout the Life Span and then the experiential field section that included a rites of passage quest cemented my desire to offer this type of therapeutic experience to people moving through life transitions… Transition is inevitable in our lives. We rarely pause long enough to notice what we are leaving behind and what we are stepping into. My work is about helping people pause and take a deeper look. The invitation is to honor and celebrate what you may be letting go of and stepping into, often in a ceremonial way. I help people get clear about what is holding them back, what they are afraid of, and what they want their life to look like.”
“From the Navy to Naropa was the ultimate transition and a definite 180! I have no regrets. It was the perfect end to my career and the beginning of a new one… Naropa changed my life.”
