Author • Teacher • Spiritual Guidance / Mentoring • Shamanic Practitioner • Artist
A LITTLE ABOUT ME
This “about me” writeup is long-ish on purpose. I understand that before you allow yourself to be spiritually vulnerable – whether a client seeking spiritual assistance or a student seeking
spiritual learning – you want to know who you’re working with. I hope you will find something about me or my spiritual path that speaks to your own soul.
I won’t start at the very beginning and bore you! Where I’d like to start is when my life changed dramatically after a big, unexpected spiritual event snuck up and came crashing in on me. There was no explaining this experience away – and so began my multi-layered, many-faceted spiritual path of self-discovery, exploration, and transformation that continues to unfold to this day.
Thankfully, I have an unceasing love of learning, expanding, and growing. If it piques my interest, I go on a journey of research and exploration to uncover my own personal truths and then take those truths and live by them – developing, molding, and enhancing my personal spiritual path, beliefs, and understanding. After my unexpected spiritual event, I began a journey to try to understand what had happened to me. I came across the work of Michael Harner, his first book, The Way of the Shaman, and soon thereafter took his introductory shamanism workshop with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. I made amazing discoveries and, after this experience, knew I had been blessed with tools that would guide me to understanding and direction in my life.
Around the same time, I also began reading Robert Monroe’s first book, Journeys Out of the Body. His experiences and findings inspired me to take the next leap forward by attending The Monroe Institute’s Gateway Voyage program which introduced me to Hemi-Sync technology to enter a theta brain wave state of altered consciousness. I found both the theta states used in the drumming of shamanism and the binaural beats of Hemi-Sync helped me to find answers and receive guidance. Both programs were absolutely life changing for me.
Michael and Robert’s work brought me synchronistically to the resources I needed to make sense of all that happened to me that one day – and all of the seemingly inexplicable incidents that have happened since. There have been many! Their work let me know I was not alone, that strange and wonderful things happen to many of us that help draw us closer to what we are here in this world to accomplish.
I have spent years studying with the FSS, gaining understanding and experience in core shamanic practices, personal power retrieval, counseling, and healing methods. At the same time, I continued taking advanced programs with TMI – exploring consciousness, further shaping and developing my perception, and learning to better understand my reality. Fast forward a bit – I am now a teacher with the FSS and an Outreach Trainer for TMI – teaching students how to use the same tools that changed my own life.
In addition to FSS and TMI, I have also studied the Pachakuti mesa traditions and sacred living teachings offered by Peruvian shaman, don Oscar Miro-Quesada. I traveled to Nepal for a student immersion into Nepalese shamanic culture guided by teacher and shaman, Bhola Banstola. I am a dedicated student of learning and understanding the
mystical paths and traditions of our ancestors as you can see by my coursework and fieldwork HERE. I am also very involved in searching out meaningful spiritual tools and practices that can help us move deep within ourselves, find answers to our questions, solutions to our problems, and profoundly connect us with our spiritual path – giving us the anchor we need especially during turbulent and difficult times in our lives.
My personal spiritual practice, combined with my shamanic, mystical, and consciousness practices, has given me a combination of inner peace, harmony, joy, and a personal understanding of working with experience and compassion to help others reveal their own mystical heart of spirituality. My spiritual path is non-dogmatic – all are welcome with me.
My book – Creative Meditation and Manifestation: Using Your 21 Innate Powers to Create Your Life – is an interactive, motivational workbook on identifying and applying one’s personal powers. Less than one year after writing a book that was intended to empower others to live joyfully and overcome obstacles in their lives, my home (as well as 2,500 others) and healing practice burned to the ground in an uncontrolled wildfire in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It was devastating not only for my family – but to our entire community.
The devastation of this experience changed my life in countless ways – as all traumatic experiences change us. Through this event, along with other struggles I've experienced, I was guided to write a book about healing from grief, depression, and loss using ancestral spiritual methods. These are the same methods I used to heal from my own trauma. The writing has been a painful labor of love that I hope will help others whose hearts are in pain for any reason – big or seemingly small. Watch for Unbreakable Spirit: Ancestral Wisdom and Sacred Practices to Help You Heal, Transform, and Thrive to be released in 2024.
In addition to my writing, teaching, and shamanic work, I am trained in the ancient art of henna, incorporating spiritual, sometimes hidden themes into my work. And – so very close to my heart and soul – I am a mixed media artist and mixed metal jewelry designer – with all of my creations having a basis and grounding in spirituality, connecting with our divine spiritual paths, and soul healing. You can read all of my credentials HERE.
Prior to all of this? I was in the corporate marketing world. I left that world and worked for a bookstore, owned my own online book business, and then opened a bookstore/coffee house with my husband. Books, writing, and conveying emotion through words are loves of mine. I went on to establish an indie publishing company where I produced vintage lifestyle books and worked with my company until my spiritual path took its big turn.
Left for last, but absolutely the most important, I have been married for many blessed years to my soul mate and best friend, Stewart. I am the mother of three wonderful children and four (yes, four!) dogs. I have a circle of long-time friends who I adore. When I am not teaching, writing, or creating, I’m hiking, meditating, reading, or studying new ideas and philosophies on seven of my favorite topics – mysticism, shamanism, spirituality, alternative healing, consciousness, creativity, and preternatural concepts and theories.
Wherever your path takes you, I intent for you a joyful existence filled with love, learning, and discovery – and I hope I will be part of it, even if for a short time.
Namaste,
