About
Being and becoming
I believe the ways we become who we are make sense in the context of our lives - what we've experienced, the relationships that have shaped us, and the environments we've had to adapt to. Even patterns that create difficulty in our lives now may have developed for very good reasons.
Understanding them in context often makes room for something that judgment doesn't: compassion, openness, and the possibility of responding differently.
Underneath all of this is a curiosity I've had for as long as I can remember: why we become who we become, why we keep doing things even when we know better, why some experiences change us and others don't.
That curiosity has shaped both my life and my work. And the more I've learned, the less tidy the answers have become.
More about me
I live and practice in Sebastopol, on the unceded ancestral homelands of the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok peoples. I offer my respect and gratitude to the people who have lived in relationship with and cared for these lands, and to their descendants who continue to do so today.
I grew up on a small farm in Penngrove, with goats, chickens, a garden, and lots of time spent playing by myself. We left when I was seven, but that closeness to animals and the natural world was something I would come back to over and over throughout my life.
There were harder parts of my childhood too, including trauma and abuse. Without knowing anything about Zen or mindfulness, I discovered how to be in the present moment when the rest felt unbearable. In college, I found my way back to that early connection with nature through Psycho-ecology. I still remember hiking into the wilderness and feeling an almost indescribable joy - completely alive and connected to the world around me.
My life since then has rarely followed a straight line. I've survived an abusive relationship, ttraveled through Europe, much of it on my own, crewed on a yacht in the Mediterranean, become a mother, started a nonprofit for single parents, and hosted a radio show. I've loved deeply, lost people I loved, changed direction, and started over more than once.
One of those changes in direction eventually brought me to psychology. After an emergency surgery that forced me to stop everything, my daughter and I returned to California so I could pursue environmental law. On a camping trip, I woke to mist in the giant redwoods and realized I didn't want to build a life that could make me lose my connection to the natural world or my daughter. After nine years away from school, I returned for a master's in counseling psychology and eventually a doctorate in clinical psychology.
There have been other interruptions along the way too - through illness, a traumatic brain injury, and more recently long COVID.
Through all of these different chapters of my life, dance has been a constant - a way to come back into my body, move what I feel, connect with myself and other people, and experience tremendous joy. More than once, it's also helped keep me sane. When our local Ecstatic Dance lost its venue, I helped find a new home for it and gathered a collective to bring it back, and I'm still co-hosting it today, often offering the closing sound baths and guided meditations.
Creating spaces for connection matters to me.That impulse to create and participate in community has shown up in other parts of my life too - I've organized around causes that matter to me, including a large benefit for Standing Rock. When I see something missing, I tend to want to help create it. When I see something I believe is wrong, I tend to speak up.
I've made choices I'm proud of and others I'd make differently. Over the years, I've taken what I've learned from the beauty and the muck and woven it into the rich tapestry of my life - finding, again and again, what it means to Awaken the Joy of Being.
Right Relationship
Right Relationship is an organizing principle for both my work and my life. My understanding of it has been deeply influenced by Indigenous teachings about our place within the living world, as well as by other traditions, relationships, and my experiences.
For me, Right Relationship is both a practice and a way of being. It's about paying attention to how we are relating to ourselves, to others, and to the Earth.
It begins with listening to ourselves - to our bodies, our needs, our values, and our limits - while remembering that we exist in relationship with others. It asks us to be aware of how we affect one another, to practice reciprocity and kindness, to have boundaries, to take responsibility when we've caused harm, and to repair when we can.
Our relationship with Earth belongs here too. We are part of the natural world and dependent upon it, even when modern life makes it easy to forget that. For me, being in Right Relationship with Earth includes respect, being mindful of how we live and what we take, and looking for ways to give back - to restore, replenish, and contribute to the regeneration of the living world we're part of. It also includes experiencing the beauty, awe, and belonging that can come from remembering we are part of something larger.
Of course, trying to live in Right Relationship doesn't mean we'll always know what that looks like. Sometimes there isn't a clear answer - our needs may conflict with someone else's. Doing what is right for ourselves may disappoint someone we love. Relationships are complicated, and sometimes we simply have to do the best we can while trying to remain attentive to ourselves, to one another, and to the impact of our choices.
I experience Right Relationship as a kind of coherence - a sense that how I'm living and relating is aligned with what I value. We move in and out of that alignment. For me, the practice is noticing when something feels off, listening to what that's telling me, taking responsibility for my part, and making adjustments as I go.