About Me

I still remember the exact moment I discovered that the internal parts of myself I thought were “bad” were actually okay. Even important.

I was a technical writer in the semiconductor industry at the time. I was reading Carl Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and it was one of those “Wait… what???” moments.

I was utterly enchanted. Seeing the unwanted parts of myself as anything other than “bad” went against everything I’d ever been taught.

A door cracked open inside me, and I knew it could never be closed again. In fact, I didn’t want to close it.

So I kept reading. And learning. And well…

You can see where it led me. 

After that encounter with Jung, I started trying over time to be more accepting of my feared, rejected parts. And wow, the idea was so much easier than the practice!

I kept falling back into thinking I had to force those parts of me to be “good,” or to excise them. (Yeah, right!) Or I would try to cover them up, desperate to be seen a certain way.

What I gradually learned is that making these changes was not something I could do alone.

It was only when I started letting others into my inner world and felt them accepting me, even my really shameful parts, that something deeper started happening.

I could breathe. The knots inside me weren’t as tight as much of the time. I could actually feel my body sometimes, instead of just my mind churning inside my head.

I started to be able to stand on little inner islands where I trusted myself. I started to know more often what I needed and wanted. A whole space gradually began opening up inside me—a space I could notice and explore, listen and respond to, learn from, live my life from.

I expanded inside. I felt freed up in ways I hadn’t known were possible.

This open, enlivened way of being felt like how I was meant to live. (How we’re all meant to live!) And it’s motivated me to persist in what can be really hard emotional work: to keep opening to and allowing what’s actually here in the present moment.

Because if I don’t? I’m half a person.

I’m half present in my life. I don’t take in love. I bury feelings and am dragged along behind what feels like a truck going at full speed where all that matters is getting to the next place, the next task, the next item to check off the never-ending list.

But if I do! If I do stay present with and allow what’s here, right now, I feel my heart beat. I see the leaves falling. I feel a wave of gratitude.

Or maybe a wave of sadness or yearning or something else.

I want to receive. I want to give. I’m actually able to slow down enough to do those things.

I feel I’m fully alive and that life is good. And I feel connected to something greater than my small, human self.

THAT is why I do this work.

That’s why I’m here letting you know this kind of inner exploration and expansion is available in this intense, crazy world.

I want you to get to uncover and live into a more expansive version of yourself.

I want you to know, in our hyper individualistic culture, that it’s okay to not be able to do it alone. In fact, it’s normal and healthy to need others to become more of your full self. That’s how we’re wired.

I want you to have your deepest self fully available to live your life.

Because then you’re freed up too. You get to bring your true self into this intense, crazy world.

And the ripples from that… that’s what our world needs more of.