Hi everyone,
My work, at its core, is helping people bring form to what matters most - whether through language, space, structure, community, or inner clarity. Today i’m excited to share that I’m opening my calendar for one-on-one advising1 calls!
I’m opening these calls both as a way to be of service, and as a way to support two community projects I care deeply about. I’ll be donating 100% of proceeds to The Commons, an SF community space, and The Mystical Hearth, a pluralistic Sunday service for all paths. So our conversation is also a direct contribution to keeping those spaces alive.
Advising calls are offered on a dana or donation basis. Dana is an ancient concept rooted in giving from the heart, proportional to your means and the value you receive.
If you’re interested you can book directly with me here.
Here are some of the areas I can support with:
design.
community building and the architecture of belonging and wisdom. I’ve learned and thought through many failures and hard-won insights in terms of what makes a community cohere. Largely from stewarding a community space I co-founded called The Commons in 2022 - a “fourth place” for personal becoming and creative actualization in community. I’ve written extensively about “fourth places”, wisdom economies, post-religious community infrastructure and what it might take to build civic institutions for the future of human development. I can help think through membership and business models, culture and norms, recurring rituals, and the broader social and physical architecture that helps a community come alive over time.
experience and facilitation design. Having seen over 5,000 events move through The Commons, and having facilitated many gatherings myself, I can help you shape an event, retreat, gathering, or recurring series so that it has real coherence, energy, and depth.
interior design for connection, creativity, and contemplation. For two years, I ran Haumbody, an interior design studio focused on creating spaces for slower rituals of self-connection, creativity, and mindfulness, and completed sixteen residential and commercial projects. I’m happy to consult on how you might use space, furniture, light, texture, and sound to create the emotional and relational atmosphere you want.
product leadership and early-stage startup advising. Before this chapter, I worked in product management and led engineering teams at Calm, DoorDash, and Stitch Fix, with a focus on personalization, onboarding, and consumer engagement. I can be helpful on questions of product direction, early-stage clarity, user experience, and how to design for resonance and retention without losing the human core.
sense-making.
meaning-making and life transitions. Perhaps you’re at an inflection point or trying to reconcile the life you have with the one you sense is possible. I have navigated a decade of genuine reinvention - moving from strategy consulting to data science to product management to startup co-founding to building a brick-and-mortar community space, alongside indie research, writing, graduate school, and multiple sabbaticals. These days my service to the world feels deeply aligned to my values and I thrive in the uncertainty of how life will use me next. I’m happy to support you in any way I can in your way-finding journey.
reflective guidance and intuitive insight. Sometimes what you need is not advice but reflection. I can serve as a deep mirror for the questions you are carrying, drawing on years of facilitation, contemplative training, and close attention to the patterns beneath what people say. I love practicing a quality of presence and listening that helps you hear your inner truth more clearly. I completed initial psychic training at the Berkeley Psychic Institute and remain in ongoing training in intuition, subtle perception, and non-dual meditation teaching.
curated research from the Rabbit Holes archive. I have spent over five years reading and cataloguing thousands of essays, books, tools, and pieces of writing into a living database of over 10,000 curations spanning personal development, art and architecture, spirituality, metaphysics, and building/creating in the world. Give me a question or a theme and I will go into the archive and surface the most relevant threads for where you are. Think of it as a research session with a well-read friend.
creating.
writing, voice, editing, and how to write a book. I’ve been writing regularly in two newsletters for over five years, have self-published a book called Rabbit Holes, and am actively writing a new book. I can help with drafts, voice, structure, proposals, and the larger question of how to shape a body of thought into writing that feels alive and true to you.
graduate school and academic application advising. I’ve applied to graduate school twice and am currently completing a master’s at Harvard Graduate School of Design. I’m happy to share perspective on designing your research agenda, crafting personal statements, and navigating academic applications from an unconventional background.
Feel free to shoot me a note at hi@patriciamou.com if you have any questions, with a few lines about what you may need support with. Or book directly here.
Warmly,
Patricia
Note that I am not an officially trained psychologist or coach :)
nice :) how much you charging for a call?