early yearsI recall a very early memory of me as an infant, holding my eyes as tight as I could against the crib mattress and later as a toddler against my pillow, and at that point my mama asking what I was doing. "It's how I see the lights, Mama. I have to see the lights". Those lights and my dear mother.
As a little girl, Mom helped me bury the menagerie of dead frogs, birds, butterflies, chipmunks - whatever dead critters I came upon and carried carefully home - and helped me to fashion markers for them out of twigs and stones. She taught me how to pray for them so that they could find their way home. I remember the queasy feeling at each dead being I found, and then, as as I held them in my little hands, how I knew them as precious treasures. I delighted in the 'finding their way home' part too. Somehow I knew that the soil we buried them in was only halfway there. When my beautiful Nonna died, just before my seventh birthday, I was devastated that I could not be in the parlor with the adults as her death drew near. I was well-acquainted with death by then, with my little animal friends, and I loved her so. Remembering the chair where I sat for several hours in the 'big room' comforts me as I write this. It was velvet and mossy green. I know now that I was her doula from a distance and the early honor brings me to my knees in gratitude. |
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seeking years
Moving through childhood into adolescence was challenging, at best. As an early teen, I played by the rules. By mid-teens, the world and I were at odds. For every dictate, I voiced a rebellion. No number of sit-ins, marches, political arguments or outbursts voicing my social disgust could assuage my need to find a resting place I could call home. With the always-present love of my dear mama, I did work at balancing my outrage, with guitar, teen clubs, youth education programs, and social visits to nursing and elder homes with my dear aunt, another early end-of-life mentor.
My late teenage and early adult years were colorful, to put it mildly. Later, I became an avid seeker of truth and explored more paths than I can name. While lighting a path to self-understanding and maturity has lasting merit, endless seeking of truths outside the self will always be seeking, and not finding. Years of digging became decades of spiritual search.
I remember feeling that my life was a road, a meandering path between there and here. And that road had felt long, beautiful, and treacherous at times. But there never was a road. Years of ever-present pure experience is the only thing I can name and verify as true. Sharing that entails descriptive observation and can become laced with interpretation, judgments, and so on. So it goes with human language. When we can stop at observation and description, that's a pretty good resting place
My late teenage and early adult years were colorful, to put it mildly. Later, I became an avid seeker of truth and explored more paths than I can name. While lighting a path to self-understanding and maturity has lasting merit, endless seeking of truths outside the self will always be seeking, and not finding. Years of digging became decades of spiritual search.
I remember feeling that my life was a road, a meandering path between there and here. And that road had felt long, beautiful, and treacherous at times. But there never was a road. Years of ever-present pure experience is the only thing I can name and verify as true. Sharing that entails descriptive observation and can become laced with interpretation, judgments, and so on. So it goes with human language. When we can stop at observation and description, that's a pretty good resting place
wake-up callsIn 1989, the devastating suicide of a dear friend shook the ground of my world. In 1992, the suicide of my husband awoke me painfully to the profound agony and ecstasy of life. Years of recovery and seeking ensued.
Beginning in 2005 after the death of my father, a series of natural and intense weather events re-wired me in ways I cannot explain. In late 2006, and again in early 2007, two near-death emergencies spontaneously revealed a conscious, awakened clarity which made further slumber an impossibly stubborn challenge. In early 2013, the awakenings increased exponentially, taking on a life of their own; shaking everything loose, dissolving physical borders, boundaries, and apparent reality as I knew it. That September, self in its ultimate bitter-sweet surrender gave way silently, gracefully, peacefully as a vividly pristine and unattached non-event during my beloved mother's final weeks in her body before dying. It happens that way sometimes. It happens still. This life is a mystery, and I am at home with that. You won't often hear me speak of God; I blaspheme in typing that word. My reverence for the Sacred Mystery is best left in silence. When I was young and grand in my knowing, I knew everything about life, about absolute truth, about what happened before life as we know it began, and what will happen after life as we know it ends. Life was an endless struggle then. Now, peace colors my days and my best words are: 'How do we know?' This much I do appear to know: birth gives way to death, death gives way to birth. That is written in the soil, in trees, in sky and stone, in the two and four-legged ones, the finned and winged ones, and in the creeping and crawling ones. |
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here and now
My reverence for the Sacred Mystery and awe of the brilliant jewel of the human heart is what is revealed in my work with you. There are infinite ways I fall in love with each client that I am privileged to attend. Offering pure listening, I hold space for you in each moment, meeting you right where you are. I am deeply present and at my very best, at each opportunity to serve.
related activities:
- Sacred Passage Doula Certification: Conscious Dying Institute, Boulder, CO July 2020
- Home Funeral Guide & Natural Burial Training: CEOLT, Asheville, NC 2012
- Hospice Patient Volunteer Training, Columbus, NC, 2009
- Attended the Haden Institute's Spiritual Direction program, Hendersonville, NC 2013
- Founder and Spiritual Director of Sanctuary of 7Seven Good Days, Mill Spring, NC 2011-2014
- Master Class:On the Path to Becoming a Congruent Human Being, Caroline Myss, Tucson, Arizona 2011
- Archetypal Consultant Certification: Caroline Myss Ed. Institute, Chicago, Ill, 2010-2011
- Minister Ordination, The Sanctuary of The Beloved, Rochester NY, 2006
- Reiki I, II, III, Master Certifications: Unity Center, Arden, NC 2000-2001
- Energy Healer, Meditation Instructor: NC School of Natural Healing, Asheville 1999-2000
- Herbal Apprentice Certification: NC School of Natural Healing, Asheville, NC 1999-2000
- Herbal Studies Certification: NC School of Natural Healing, Asheville, NC 1998
- Therapeutic Touch Training: Benedictine Hospital, Kingston, NY 1990