I’ve written and illustrated stories since before I could actually write - my dad wrote my stories down and I drew the pictures. Yet I was nearing completion of my Ph.D before I submitted anything for publication. Since then, my fiction and creative non-fiction has been published in literary journals and produced on radio.
In 2009, I was cast in a local theater production. Two weeks into rehearsals, I began feverishly writing plays. I’ve had several shorts produced in New York City and Madison, Wisconsin. While continuing to work on plays, I have also returned to my first love, children’s books.
They say to write what you read, and what I read most are children’s books. Over the years, I wrote a number of picture books and chapter books, although I only recently considered marketing them.
First I had to get some academic desires out of my system. That meant a Ph.D. in paleobiology (evolutionary theory with fossils). Research was exciting, but the research life was not. In my field, people often worked for ten years at underpaid, temporary jobs before finding a permanent position. Eighty hour work weeks were the norm. So I abandoned research for museum education, and then joined the faculty of DePaul University in Chicago.
Two things happened in Chicago. I admitted I was a creative writer. I brought my spirituality out of the closet.
From childhood, I have perceived a universal energy that flows through and around all that exists, and is the stuff of which we are made. Not finding a worship institution that matched my native perception, I created an eccentric, intensely private practice. In Chicago, I first found common ground with other spiritual seekers and began to study energy healing.
While at DePaul, I had a vision - right in the midst of a gripe session in a colleague’s office. A delicious light burst from my gut through the top of my head with the words, “Let go.” Two years later, I quit my nice, tenure track position for a journey to who knew where. As an interfaith Universalist, feminist, and most emphatically not a Christian, I was horrified when this led to a Benedictine monastery. But I joined the monastery for fourteen months, studying monastic history and theology while reveling in the freedom of daily monastic practice... until the sisters kicked me out. The story of my monastery sojourn is told in Rough Grace: Inside the Invisible Cloister of Benedictine Community, which remains unpublished. If you are curious check out my blog.
Throughout this journey, I have struggled to live from my creative and spiritual center. After leaving the monastery, I trained as a spiritual intuitive guide so I could help others connect to their inner, creative source and live a spiritually authentic life.
I continue to have my share of suffering, but I know - absolutely KNOW from direct, personal experience - that we are part of a larger, coherent picture. In that larger picture, suffering dissolves leaving only rightness and love. I don’t understand this one bit. Yet even on days when I am fogged out by pain, this knowledge provides a touchstone of inner peace. Anyone can gain this perspective. It results automatically as we delve through past experience to land in our own centers.
I have received amazing help along the way - from therapists, teachers, friends, family, my inner guide, and various spiritual entities. I continue to get support, as I sink down and resurface in the ongoing dance of spiritual and creative development. So I am immensely grateful if I can help any of my companions on the earthly journey - though personal contact or the written page.
Namaste.
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