Here’s the short version for those trying to figure out if you want to work with me and just need to make sure I’m not (that) crazy:

I’m an ACC certified Life Transitions and Empowerment coach who loves to help clients navigate the transitions of life to become more fully themselves, more fully alive in their life, and able to name and live out their goals and dreams. I am certified through IPEC as a coach, and I also have an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte, NC, an M.Div from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a BA in World Religions from California State University, Chico. I’m a late-in-life parent and live in San Francisco, CA with my husband, my preschooler, and my cat.

Now, for those who want more of the whole story, read on:

The Early Chapters

Where does the journey of becoming yourself begin?

I think I have always been curious about how people become themselves, how they figured it out, what choices they made that helped or hindered. My family and I moved around a lot and as a young person I explored my ever-shifting world through stories, reading and writing them. I wrote and illustrated paper-and-duct tape-bound books like The Girl Who Loved Horses, and The Girl Who Hated Cleanness (grammar was never my strong suit). It was in high school that I discovered how you could hide your whole self inside poetry. My mother became ill and writing poetry helped me not implode.

It is only now I can look back and understand how stories and writing became my first foray into authenticity. That journey began with timidity and now is something I try to live out loud and on purpose. But I’m jumping ahead.

[fun fact: the rocking chair I’m sitting in below, circa age 7-ish, is the same one I’m sitting in on the Home page:)

I grew up in a home where faith was paramount. And I took that to mean there was only one right way to become a person. So I tried to figure out how people became themselves through faith and explored world religions in undergrad, knowing how significantly faith shaped worldviews, and if you could understand someone’s worldview, you could understand almost all of them. After a long decline my mother died when I was in college and that disruption did not fit anything from my own worldview.

My unmoored, lost self grasped at ways of being and in my limited imagination I selected a path forward with an innate desire to help others.

The Middle Chapters

I found myself in Seminary on the east coast, thinking I’d emerge something in the realm of missions-adjacent. Meaning, helping people while living in another country. What I found there was a community of strong women who elevated the possibilities for myself, a cadre of therapists who helped me start to listen to my own stories about myself, and emerged realizing what I’d studied was not really what I wanted to be spending my life on. But not yet a clear picture of what did make sense. I bought my first laptop and started writing stories, discovering a joy in that I’d forgotten and discounted as “kid stuff.”

It took a local writing conference to clue me into the world of creative writing possibilities. The fact I’d never heard of an MFA program helped me realize the desire I had to attend one was genuinely MINE, and not anything I was following because it seemed like the right thing to do. Listening to that inner drive and acting on it was a huge part of beginning to live into the authenticity I now keep as a north star for myself.

Meanwhile, my MFA dreams weren’t going to pay for themselves. My experience in the world of work was equally accidental and amorphous and reflected what I thought I was supposed to do or like doing. I had an inherent suspicion you weren’t allowed to love what you did for work unless it somehow related to faith. I believed work shouldn’t be where I experienced joy, but it could fund my dreams of writing. But each new iteration of work started to fit better and better as I became clear on what I did like to do and what my strengths were.

Eventually I found myself in leadership development consulting and curriculum design, a place I loved for the people-development possibilities. It was there I met my first coaches. There was something about them, their energy and engagement with life, that I wanted for myself. Their ability to directly and positively impact others called to me. I filed it away as a future possibility.

I kept writing along the way. Found a life partner (thanks OKCupid!). Adopted cats. Found my world settling into place in a way that created space to wrestle with the question of whether I wanted to become a parent. I had hoped that would figure itself out for me somehow. When it didn’t I realized I’d have to make the most conscious choice of my life of whether to lean all the way in or step all the way out. A truly on-pupose transition without any guarantees for the outcome.

At age 43, with the help of IVF, I did become a parent. And I’m living the reality on the other side of a conscious choice which is full of joy and purpose and intention, but not always ease. Becoming a mom has clarified what is truly important to me and also unraveled some things about how I used to operate in the world. Something big transitions can do. I find myself no longer able to fit myself into boxes in a way that I used to be able to make work just enough to get by. I find myself wanting bigger things for myself and my life, and for my daughter to have a chance to live into as well.

When we collectively went through the giant transition of the pandemic I was confronted again with things not being able to operate in the usual ways. And that cracked open enough space to start my journey as a coach. I am so grateful for the life changing learning I found in that journey.

The Current Chapter

I have an immense gratitude for the work I get to do with clients. I love being a part of someone’s journey in becoming themself. I too am continually becoming. I see life as a continual invitation to become and grow.

I am the author of The ABC’s of Pandemic Parenting: A mini-memoir, available HERE. And you will see many more books by me in my next chapters of life.