EP 240: Hunting and Making God – Motherhood, Creativity, and Building a Church of Her Own with Ranier Amiel

In this episode, the third in the Santa Fe trilogy, Kimberly speaks with Ranier Amiel, an artist, bodyworker, and single mother who is restoring a century-old church in Truchas, New Mexico, and turning it into a home, studio, and eventually a space of community and sacred inquiry. Recorded inside the church itself, their conversation moves between the balance of motherhood and creativity, the grounding power of physical labor, and what it means to hunt for and make God after losing faith in the spiritual community you were raised in. Ranier shares her vulva portraiture work, including its two-year run inside an immersive theater project in Amsterdam, and the stark contrast she witnessed between American and Dutch women’s relationships to their bodies. They discuss the trauma orientation as a cultural overcorrection that can become avoidant of self-expression, the obsession with self-definition versus actually embodying who you are, and the need for hierarchy, tradition, and compression alongside the essential self. The conversation closes with reflections on the layers between: body and soul, survival and art, the seen and the unseen.

Bio

Ranier Amiel is an artist, bodyworker, movement teacher, and painter based in Truchas, New Mexico, where she is restoring a century-old church into a home, studio, and community space. Born in Santa Fe and raised deeply inside a spiritual community, she has spent the last two decades on what she calls a path of hunting and making God—seeking the sacred through the body, art, and radical vulnerability. She is known for her vulva portraiture and witnessing work, which she has practiced for over twelve years, including a two-year collaboration with an immersive theater company in Amsterdam. A single mother to her son Ollie, Ranier’s life and work sit at the intersection of art, motherhood, bodywork, and the creation of sacred space. She envisions the church as a place of deeper meaning, community inquiry, and a different perspective on spiritual truth—guided by a board of priestesses.

What She Shares:

– The wrestle of motherhood and creativity as a single parent

– Restoring a century-old church in Truchas as her biggest art project

– How physical labor, trenching, building, moving rock, became the most grounding thing she’s ever done

– Hunting and making God after spiritual disillusionment at 19

– Her vulva portraiture work and what it reveals beyond trauma

– The night-and-day contrast between American and Dutch women’s body relationships

– A vision for the church as sacred community space led by a board of priestesses

What You’ll Hear:

– Motherhood and creativity: the wrestle of being a full-time single mom and a wild artist

– Defining for herself what a good mom looks like and what she’s willing to let go of

– The history of the church in Truchas and how she found it on Zillow

– Desperation and audacity: taking on a property with no plumbing and no heat

– How building her own home with her hands healed her nervous system

– Being a white woman in a historically Hispano community and being welcomed

– The church’s journey from services to gallery to bedroom to future sacred space

– Growing up in a spiritual community that fell apart and watching people cling harder to beliefs

– What church means to her: hunting and making God, creating sacred space

– Removing the patriarchy from people’s bodies through bodywork, movement, and painting

– The vulva witnessing work: reclamation paintings, celebration paintings, and touching the place beyond the trauma

– Two years of live witnessing inside an immersive theater project in Amsterdam

– American versus Dutch women: puritanical repression versus healthy embodiment

– Kimberly’s reflections on writing Erotic Seasons and holding both wounding and alchemical power

– The trauma orientation as avoidance of self-expression and a block to maturation

– Watching her teenage son self-diagnose and the cultural swing from denial to over-identification

– The geranium and the jungle plant: helping people find the conditions they need to thrive

– Uniqueness tangled with individualism and the obsession with self-definition

– The loss of hierarchy, tradition, and roles—and why compression helps us find essence

– The body as the physical form of the soul, not a separate sack of flesh

– The layers between as that which actually makes everything separate and not

– Kimberly on occupying a between space in the culture and cultivating trustworthiness over customer satisfaction

Resources

Location: Truchas, New Mexico

Website: https://ranieramiel.com/

IG: @ranieramiel