My husband Charles and I live in Homer, Alaska. We have filled our 35 years together with raising our children, Graham and Elizabeth, building energy-efficient homes, gardening, camping, fishing and harvesting and using wild edible and medicinal plants.
My early days in the forests and fields of the rural Hudson River Valley in upstate New York taught me a love of nature that has sustained me throughout my life. It has led to a long and varied career as a conservationist, a sustainability activist, and ultimately to my work in healing and Celtic tradition.
After working as staff for Rain Magazine: A Journal of Appropriate Technology in Portland Oregon and founding the Alaska Alternative Energy Resource Center at the Alaska Center for the Environment, spirituality emerged as a primary force in my life. My path was guided from one outstanding teacher to another: Grandmother Bernice Falling Leaves, The Barbara Brennan School of Healing, Rosalyn Bruyere and the Center for Intentional Living Program in Depth Psychology.
I established a healing practice in 1994 as a nationally certified bodyworker. Friendship with Janice Schofield, Alaska’s most well-known teaching herbalist, led to collaboration and co-teaching retreats on wild edible and medicinal plants.
In time the need for healing ancestral trauma and the earth-centeredness of my own indigenous heritage called me to a Masters of Arts from Alaska Pacific University focused on Psychology and Tradition Knowledge and a Ph.D. from Wisdom University in Indigenous Irish Celtic Tradition.
Not surprisingly, my work centers on the power to heal the whole self, body, mind and spirit, extending to one’s family, community, our ancestors, the natural world and the Earth. Everything is connected.