All my life I've enjoyed people: the uniqueness of their individual stories, the richness and variety of their culture, the inspiration of their personal triumphs. I've had the opportunity to visit all 50 states, and to set up housekeeping in five of them (CO, CA, TX, NJ, MI). When I was 12, one of my best friends died, and I cried for a long time. When I was 16, my parents enabled me to travel to Guadalajara, Mexico for a summer, where I polished my Spanish and learned the beauty of another culture. I also became more aware and sensitized to the hurts of humans all over the planet. I experienced some of those hurts myself, sometimes at the hands of well-meaning but harmful people.

I have wanted to understand the healing process, and to help others on the same journey along the way. I have studied and tried many approaches to healing, and found some of them harmful as well.

Over the past 25 years, I have tried to integrate and practice what I've learned. To me, deep healing can begin when we have a safe place to tell our story. A place where we won't get interrupted, where someone won't try to "fix" us with their set of biases, where a genuine, caring person can give us the space to hear ourselves tell our story, to empathize with us, and to affirm us unconditionally. I find that healing often includes God-issues, which we need to explore without worrying about the bias of another person trying to "convert" us to their finite way of viewing the Transcendent. I find that people make the most significant strides in their journey toward healing when they make changes from the inside-out. This means they evaluate alternatives and come to a reasoned conclusion themselves, without over-concern about what others think of them. The ability to do this, I find, is a life-long journey. Sometimes we need someone outside of ourselves to help us sort through what works and doesn't work for us, without biasing us with their own constructions. This is who I enjoy being -- a "midwife" along life's journey toward birthing a new and more functional self.

Values

"I believe we can make a difference in our world by our personal choices."

"I believe that people change best from the inside out, rather than the outside in."

Favorite Quotes

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Do to others what you would have them do to you." -- Jesus

"... no matter what our situation, whether we are rich or poor, educated or not, of one race, gender, religion or another, we all desire to be happy and to avoid suffering." -- Dalai Lama

"Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit -- such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony -- which bring happiness to both self and others." -- Dalai Lama