Background

Each of our lives are like myths: sacred journeys that lead eventually to our own true selves.  If my life were a myth, it might begin with Persephone’s abduction and a rather extended visit with Aphrodite—on both her good days and bad—followed by a long career in graduate school with practical, business-like Athena.  These days I feel most like being at the hearth of quiet, reflective Hestia:  I’m attracted to contemplation and hot tea.

As for my earthbound life, I was raised in a small rural town in Northern California near lakes and wilderness areas; our gang of friends was always loose in the neighborhood, wandering through gullies and back hills searching for adventure.  My family culture is marked by the stories of ancestors, aunts, uncles, and cousins who traveled from the mid-west to the west-coast and, in the 1930s and 1950’s, north to Alaska. The Alaska stories told by my relatives drew me, so my mother and my cousin drove me up the Al-Can Highway in a rickety truck in 1978.

My life changed in Alaska: socially, politically, and spiritually.  Nature provides a profound experience in Alaska; the land and the weather seem alive.  It’s hard not to be touched by that, but for a lot of us, at some point in our lives—maybe we become locked in our own inner black lands of loss and sadness—we are not touched by the powerful force of nature.  Maybe our myths follow at a distance like pale shadows. This happened to me, and it was the sadness that propelled me forward.  I studied language and linguistics, Alaska Native culture, and theatre at University of Alaska Fairbanks.   Before I applied to graduate school, I adapted an Alaska Native Eyak story to music and dance. There is a lot of wisdom and knowledge in Alaska Native cultures. Telling the story with the dance group there in the theatre recreated that same feeling of connection to others that I experience in nature.

In 1991, I went to graduate school and found a different kind of myth and meaning in the southeastern urban forest of Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta is a spiritual place: it is full and rich with flowers and plant growth and the diversity of people and culture; but it’s fertility is grounded and balanced by consistency and history and tradition. At Georgia State University, I studied clinical psychology in a humanistic and empirically-oriented environment. It was a grounding experience and, combined with an ongoing practice in Soto Zen Buddhism, helped me to contain and to tolerate the suffering that is part of our lives—and to celebrate the joy, the creativity, and resiliency of living.  It is this resiliency that has fostered my creativity and has been a healing force in my professional work.

In 1996, I met my husband, Peter, and lured him to Alaska with me in 2000 to join my family and to pursue my dream of being a teacher and psychotherapist.  A year after moving back to Alaska, in 2001, I developed a small independent psychotherapy practice.  I am committed to loving-kindness and to helping my students and clients to develop the capacity to hold the stresses and disappointments of living, to respond to life in resilient and creative ways, and to embrace the joyful journey of meaning and purpose.

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