In Brief

I’m a writer and a mom, living near the San Francisco Bay.

With a few more words

I sometimes joke about that stage kids go through when they’re three—the one where their “why” button gets stuck. Mine never unstuck, I say, so here I am, still endlessly asking how the world works, why the world works. And when it gets broken, why that, too. I love our world. I love trying to understand it.

In college I majored in International Studies, which allowed me to temporarily quench my thirst for knowledge about the world while gleaning remarkably little insight about what to do next. I studied topics like global political economy, cultural anthropology, and world religions. I studied at George Fox College, a private school where the Quaker-based spiritual climate was just enough like my Anabaptist roots to be familiar and just enough different to give me new language and images for being human, connected with Light.

A year and an internship and a personal crisis later, I was enrolled in seminary, pouring all my why’s into metaphysics: God, Meaning, Truth, Life—anything that hinted at starting with a capital letter. It was a rich and tumultuous season of study, and by its conclusion I was far from the person I was when it began. In the process of earning Master’s degrees in Theology and New Testament Literature, I had successfully deconstructed my entire self (and to think, I actually paid money for this!). When the dust had settled, my identity could no longer hang on the bulwarks of institutionalized religion. I have since discovered that I share this story, or some version of it, with many souls around the globe.

My growing draw toward a deeper sense of self took me a number of places next. First, therapy (which really ought to count as the final year of any seminary experience). Second, a pastoral internship at a church (did I mention I’m a little bit crazy?). Third, an adjunct teaching job at the local university. I taught Bible as Literature, convinced that what we think about God matters, and that the Bible can both help and hinder our efforts at self and world understanding, depending on how it’s used. I’m still convinced of this.

And the why’s that had filled and fueled my steps to that point did not wane. Eastern philosophy began to fill my bed stand, as did physics and mythology and Carl Jung. I became fascinated with tiny things, and cosmic things, and the ways both get echoed, metaphorically (literally?), inside our souls.

And I started to write.

I’ve been writing five years, now. I write about healing and spirituality. I write about embracing the soul, even when this means leaving the comforting walls of religion. I write about life’s and truth’s layers, which often get hidden under personal masks and corporate dogmas and institutionalized family lines. I write about the paths on which my why’s have taken me.

My writings–here and elsewhere–have become a bridge for me from deconstruction to construction, from places of darkness and inner tumult to ones of greater understanding and light. I hope they can be, and/or inspire the building of these kinds of bridges, for you as well.

Please see my writings page for more on current projects.