About

About me…

My first twenty years — family & school years

Born and raised in Kansas (like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz), I attended schools with names like Chelsea, Muncie, Grace Lutheran, Turner. I took violin lessons with Mr. Patterson and ballet lessons with  Madame Alexander, a Russian primadonna ballerina, who wore her hair pulled up high in a bun on the top of her graceful, elegant, beautiful head.

It was at ballet class where I first met and fell in love with Erik Satie’s wonderful Gymnopedies. Madame Alexander had no phonograph; she had a live pianist who came and played an upright piano as we held onto a barre in front of a mirrored wall. My college years, were spent at the University of Kansas, Woodbury College, San Jose State University and the University of Texas in Denton, studying (among other things), Anthropology, Fine Arts, Art History and Modern American Literature.

The next twenty years — Fortune 500 years

Immediately out of college, I worked for a short time on the set of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  After that amazing adventure, I lived in major metropolitan areas and worked 9 to 5 in the executive offices of Fortune 500 companies, at major universities and in law offices.  All the while that I worked for other people. I wondered if it was a coincidence that job is spelled the same as Job, the book in the bible that chronicled some poor man’s journey though the dark night of the soul.

It was at this time that I received Knowledge (my favorite gift, ever!) and later began to delve into the healing process.

I attended the original EST (Erhard Seminars Training), all twelve levels of Stewart Emery’s Actualizations leadership training in San Francisco, various Twelve-Step Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) groups, plus peer-counseling classes such as Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) and Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing.

The third twenty years — creative

During this time I was self-employed, poor as a church mouse, yet free to explore even deeper levels of healing — for myself and others.

For my rent and bread and butter, I sold paintings, drew portraits, published magazine articles, invented and marketed a tool called the AstroTemplate —  wrote a book to go with it (see Astrology). Living now in a small college town — Eugene, Oregon — I stayed busy working in law offices, doing astrological charts, writing articles, drawing and painting portraits.

But what I loved best was volunteering at White Bird, a local social service agency where PhDs worked for minimum wage and taught accredited crisis and counseling classes. There, they trained me to work with low-income, indigent, homeless, suicidal and even criminal clients. With Oregon PeaceWorks, I helped present conflict resolution workshops at the city jail and forest work camp for youth.  I truly began to understand that people at the extremes of the economic spectrum are very much the same, with the same fundamental human need to feel safe and be happy, healthy and free.

Beginning an in-depth study of A Course In Miracles at the same time also helped me understand that all things are for healing. “Physician, heal thyself”… Then A Course In Miracles study group I attended fell into my lap. The leader moved to another city and I inherited the key to the church. For over twenty years, I’ve led ACIM study groups in person and over the Internet.

On my ACIM Essentials pages are more than 380 videos to help ACIM students (including me!) study the lessons and master its key concepts.

White Bird began sending private clients to my office and I found I far preferred counseling to making astrological charts. For several years I maintained a private therapy practice in which clients accomplished some very deep regression work, including past lives therapy.  It seemed that during these years, I was learning important healing tools outside of academia, a very private and personal PhD course of study.

In 2003 I decided to study hypnotherapy so that I could have a credential. However, as a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, I use my skills differently from other hypnotherapists. I do not hypnotize; I de-hypnotize. I de-hypnotize clients from trances that stem from trauma.  I merely facilitate a person’s relaxation to the point where he or she can access their own inner wisdom — the key to healing and recovery. There is a wise and loving voice inside each of us that knows exactly what we need, to heal. We humans can only assume.

About a dozen years ago I discovered that I’d been circumcised as a little girl in Kansas. My book The Rape of Innocence evolved from my years of research, investigation, and personal healing.

Since my discovery, I have been a passionate “intactivist” — advocating for the rights of children to keep their healthy, whole, intact human bodies.

Healing is, from what I can tell, what life on planet earth is all about. It certainly gives the spiritual muscles a workout… and it’s so much fun! A real-life adventure.

Essentially, all healing is the release from fear.
The purpose of this course is to prepare you for Knowledge…
so is the only real purpose of any legitimate course.
ACIM Urtext

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