My Story

I Know What It Feels Like to Believe the Pain Will Never End.

If I can do it, you can do it. I mean that literally, and here is how it happened.

Chapter One

The Wound

I grew up in Appalachian West Virginia, where the mountains were beautiful and the pain was hidden. In our house, we walked on eggshells whenever my father was around.

I was a fat kid. We were poor. Neither of those issues decreased the shame I felt. My father was an alcoholic with a mental health challenge. Somewhere along the way the family I had known, the one where I felt stable and loved, exploded all around me. I woke up one day at ten years old and knew I was truly alone.

There was abuse in that house, and there was a church that taught me to fear the God who was supposed to love me. I learned, before I could even name it, that the world wasn't safe and that I wasn't safe.

I was also a lesbian who didn't know what a lesbian was. This was 1972, in a mountain town, long before the internet, and there was no one I could ask. I still remember the relief of finding the word in the World Book encyclopedia. If someone had bothered to write it down, I couldn't be the only one. I also remember how much I loved Doris Day, and it was years before I understood why.

I did what many wounded people do. I learned to survive. I built walls. I became tough on the outside and shattered on the inside. For a long time, that was enough to get by.

Getting by isn't living.

"There are some truths that have to be shared."
Chapter Two

The Descent

The pain I carried led me where unhealed pain always leads. I hurt so badly that I just wanted to die, so I went looking for the highest high for the longest time. I found it in drugs, in alcohol, in food, and in relationships that mirrored the chaos I already knew. I self-sabotaged in every way a person can, because when you believe you're broken, you build a life that proves it.

Along the way there were panic attacks and night terrors, and there were years when I didn't feel like I was in my own body at all.

There were moments when I didn't want to be alive. I'm not saying that for sympathy. I'm saying it because if you're in that place right now, I need you to know: I was there too. I'm still here.

The bottom was real. It was also the place where something shifted.

Chapter Three

The Turning Point

Recovery didn't happen overnight. It happened one choice at a time, one day at a time. I entered recovery, I went back to school, and I earned my degree in psychology with a minor in theology. Somewhere in those years I discovered that the spiritual path wasn't separate from the healing path. They were the same road.

I went looking for every kind of psychotherapist there was, and I did the work. It was like peeling an onion. I would get through one layer of pain only to find a deeper wound underneath. I just kept at it. I had to, because it was my life, and I wanted to be happy.

I began working in mental health, and something remarkable happened: the skills I was learning to help others were healing me too. Every person I sat with, every story I listened to, showed me another piece of the puzzle. My pain had a purpose. My mess was becoming my message.

Then I found energy work, with some amazing healers, and after that massage therapy, and I learned the thing that changed how I do everything: the body holds it all. Every toxic emotion you have ever swallowed is stored in your muscles, your cells, and your organs, and talk alone was never going to reach it. I trained in Reiki, Kolamani, and energetics. I earned certifications and degrees. I became a licensed massage therapist. I was ordained. I kept transforming through it all, not because I was fixed, but because I was finally brave enough to feel.

"If I can do it... you can do it!"
Chapter Four

Building a Life of Service

For over 40 years, I've dedicated my life to helping others find their own turning point. I started as a small-town community mental health worker in West Virginia and worked my way up through that system until, as I used to joke, there was nowhere left to go unless the Director quit or died. For years I was the on-call emergency worker, the one who came out at two in the morning. Then Governor Gaston Caperton appointed me the state's advocate for people with developmental disabilities and mental illness, and I spent two years in school meetings fighting for children whose plans had been written for everyone's convenience except the child's.

In 1986, while I was still a student at WVU, I brought the campus LGBT organization back to life and ran West Virginia's first LGBT rights conference. I did it because I knew what it meant to be invisible, and I wasn't willing to let anyone else stay that way.

After September 11th, I served as a consultant to families who had lost loved ones, people drowning in a grief they never imagined. I went into private practice. In 2012 I wrote my first book, Transforming Fear and Anxiety into Power, because I saw a need to get what I knew out to more people than could ever fit in my office. Grief Matters followed, and today there are 40 books in three languages, available in more than ten countries. They are books on grief, anxiety, fear, depression, addiction, chronic illness, and spiritual transformation, and each one began as someone's pain and became a guide for someone else's healing.

Today, I work with people one-on-one from my home in Houston, Texas. Some come to me with grief so heavy they can't stand. Some come with anxiety that has stolen their sleep. Some come because they're tired of being broken and are ready, even if they're scared, to begin. Most of them were sent by someone I helped before. Word of mouth is still my best advertising, and I think that comes down to one thing: without trust, there is no healing relationship.

Credentials & Training

Education & Certifications

  • A.S. in Psychology - 1982
  • Certificate in Women’s Studies, West Virginia University - 1985
  • B.S. in Psychology, Minor in Theology, Davis and Elkins College - 1986
  • Licensed Massage Therapist - 2001
  • Reiki Master Teacher - 2004
  • Certified Energetics Practitioner - 2001
  • Kolamani Master Teacher - 2006
  • Ordained Minister - 2004
  • M.S. in Metaphysics - 2022
  • Pursuing Dual Doctorates: Divinity & Metaphysical Psychology - University of Sedona
  • 40+ years in mental health services & spiritual consulting
Recognition
  • Revived the WVU LGBT organization and ran West Virginia’s first LGBT rights conference - 1986
  • Founding Board Member, West Virginia Head Injury Foundation - 1985
  • Board Member, West Virginia Domestic Violence Coalition - 1986
  • Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities - 1986
  • Board Member, Women’s Aid in Crisis Domestic Violence Shelter, WV - 1987
  • Governor-appointed Advocate for Persons with Disabilities - 1987–1989
  • Post-9/11 Family Consultant - 2002
  • Delaware Women in Business DIVA ACHIEVA - 2005
  • Who’s Who in American Women Entrepreneurs - 2016
Professional Affiliations
Member, Association for Spiritual Integrity
Your Story Matters Too
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