I have been a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in Minnesotta, USA since 1998. I was divorced and am now happily remarried for the past 10 years. I am a mother of two adult children. I am quite eclectic in my spiritual learning and practice and in many ways pragmatic. I look for ways to show up a more fully present, loving and connected human being. I am drawn to practices and learning that help me to feel centered, grounded and experience our divine spiritual nature. I am averse to teachings that encourage fear, separation, spiritual hierarchy, and place another human being between us and intuitive knowing. I love gardening, hiking, cross country skiing, playing with art, and the outdoors. I am considering taking beginner cello lessons in 2023.
In 2010, I experienced a Spiritual Emergency during a time of significant change and loss. New layers of seeing or awakening to the way we collectively create what arises in and around us, left me a bit wide eyed and sleepless. Night after night at 2am, I found myself doing a life inventory of sorts from this new awareness. While I was opening to new seeing and sensing, I became very sleep deprived, ungrounded and fearful, and I experienced a mental health hospitalization for 7 days. As a result, I was thrown into court involvement related to physical custody of my then minor children. While trying to make sense of the mental health professionals’ opinion of what had happened, I was pointed to Stanislav Grof’s book Spiritual Emergency by a friend and clinical psychologist. This offered a new means of understanding what had happened that immediately resonated with me. It also pointed me toward a way to return to the whole and grounded person I had previously been, and offered ideas for integrating my new spiritual experience/understanding. I read many books on spiritual emergency in the following years and I became certified as a spiritual emergence coach through IMHU in 2016. I had always been someone who valued participating in therapy and had done so on numerous occasions. After my SEY experience, I found that I had to choose carefully which professionals/persons could help me sort through what had happened in my non-ordinary states, without overly pathologizing my experience because they did not understand it. In 2021, I had another, several-day-experience of non-ordinary states after a traumatic and unexpected death of a family member. This time, I was able to navigate by seeking out appropriate support from my community of friends and use familiar self care methods without significant psychiatric intervention. I was grateful to experience so much less fear due to the years of understanding and support that I had received through the IMHU community and other sources.
I am Certified by the Center for Mind Body Medicine in group facilitation and in teaching methods of self care, breath work, guided imagery, journaling and mindfulness.
I come to the work as an open hearted individual who practices meditation and deep listening. I bring curiosity to hearing others’ stories, helping them ground in the physical body, and to help individuals start to make sense of their experience.
I am highly sensitive energetically and transmit a feeling of warmth and connection in sessions. I am trained in energy healing and a variety of methods of grounding and clearing energy.
I have supported clients who are experiencing spiritual emergency in individual sessions and as an in-school therapist with adolescents going through non-ordinary states. I have supported parents whose adolescent and adult children are going through non-ordinary states and are struggling with how to help them, what it means for their child’s future, and how to connect with non-pathologizing mental health and community support.