Briefly … this was going to be my brief overview bio. LOL.
As brief as I can be … I always love “the story” and write “too much” for some folks. I am ok with that. I am doing what I need. Others love my story and style.
I've been an artist my entire life. I’ve been a protector of the child or the underdog my entire life. How those two have unfolded and worked together is a long story. And my bio is over sixty years of story. I have a lot share because I mostly thought about things for the first forty years.
As usual, here, I am weaving into my “bio” not just info “about me” but with the primal therapy concepts. And, how I came to be doing Soul Portraits. How I came to believe that I am able to draw - channel - your Higher Self’s message that your adult, indoctrinated brain is too afraid to let you know.
I try to connect all the dots I’ve thought about for so long, I try to answer your questions before you know you have them.
This website is pulling together “four life-times in one” to do my work now - listening to and supporting the sacred story of your life. To remember, wherever you are, whatever is happening, your Soul, your Higher Self knows.
Let me start with my worldly credentials and education: I earned a psychology degree with a minor in Art (1983) and a Master's degree in Mental Health Counseling (1985), both from Truman State University in Kirksville, MO. I was born and raised in Iowa. I was a graphic artist before I went to college at age 22, back in the days when we literally cut and pasted (waxed) on to blue squared paper. After I graduated, I was a child-family therapist in juvenile court and private practice, a mental health consultant, a program director, and a community organizer through the early 90’s.
During that time I did graphic layout for my newsletters and brochures wherever I worked, was a master seamstress, and I quilted. I really despised what was happening to women and children in the systems, in the name of help. Help is the sunny side of control. I wanted to bust up the system. To be there - trying to re-create the system - I had to be literally creating, completing something that was tangible.
In the early 90s I trained in family and community mediation, and later completed coursework for the master’s in conflict resolution at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, (‘94-96) focused on empowering women in systems. I did not complete my thesis. I was smack-dab in the middle of a violent marriage and trying to extricate myself. Ironic, eh?
I do have a background in mediation and collaboration of groups from community to state-level - IL, AZ, and NY. through late 1999. It was
brutal. I realized I couldn’t “change the system.” I was a whistleblower about what was happening there. It led me to changing - healing me - as the woman in the systems. All starting with the obstetric system.
In January 2000 I began to study and practice craniosacral therapy after finding it so helpful in 1999. I was surprised and thrilled to learn that I could study to be a craniosacral therapist.
Craniosacral comes from the osteopathic medicine and I had found osteopathy to be a saving grace for symptoms no one - even neurologists - could resolve at age 24. I had had a motorcycle wreck at age 16 where I hit my head on the pavement. In college, when symptoms were exacerbated by stress and after a debilitating series of inpatient neuro exams, including an angiogram (yes, for real), my osteopath sent me to the osteopathic college. I was treated by new graduate doing cranial as a fifth year specialty. My symptoms went away. Was that healing? I think so. I still use an osteopath as my primary medical person.
So, twenty years later, I was thrilled to hear that I could learn to do something for others that had saved my life. I took every course available at the Upledger Institute. Immediately, my other motorcycle wrecks (I was a daredevil), intense dental experiences, and giving birth to my son - violently - begin to surface. I had read “The Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing” in 1999, by Carolyn Myss, and she says “Our body is our biography.” We have to access the body to heal emotionally and mentally. Craniosacral does that.
In January 2000, after I left my “dream job” in NY, I discovered Infant Massage Instruction and I decided to return to direct work with mothers and babies “to keep them out of the system in the first place.” Soon, I realized that the obstetric system IS the system that defines our lives, that needs to be reformed and RE-STRUCTURED big time.
From the early 2000s I have studied pre and perinatal psychology, primal and newborn neural development, and mother-baby attachment healing with founders of the work. The late David Chamberlain, PhD was my mentor and is featured in my film. He is the author of “Windows to the Womb: Revealing the Conscious Baby from Conception Forward”. Raymond Castellino, DC, RCST, was my teacher in birth trauma healing, and James Prescott, PhD is a colleague, friend, and the focus of a new documentary.
In 2001 I went to a second course in Pediatric Cranio Sacral with the Upledger Institute. I was taking it a second time with a woman I met at the first one, so we could finish some unfinished work. In a Somatic Emotional Release (SER) upper level course at Upledger, I had been the subject for the teacher demo. I went to my conception and there was much panic. I couldn’t “perform well” for her to look good. That was a challenge for me, AND, it was an imprint I needed to continue to work on.
So, I met my friend. I experienced a re-experiencing and integrating of my conception. It had not quite been consensual. It was the typical she didn’t want to and said no - in her head, but gave in. Sadly, many of us experienced this in conception.
It was a beautiful, powerful, life-changing experience. Within six months I was in a third and final attempt to divorce the abusive obstetric resident husband.
I started the Castellino Prenatal and Birth Trauma healing two-year program in Spring, 2002. I returned from my first Womb Surround process (required as part of admission to program) where I experienced the first process of healing my cord trauma from my birth. I ended the weekend intensive with my baby self showing us forceps. Interestingly, before leaving for the class, I had spontaneously signed up to take a one-day oil portrait class with the late artist Vin Luong. the weekend following the process. That turned out to be serendipitous and reaffirming.
I had been viewing old John Bradshaw “inner child” videos from the library because his very popular work in the 80-90s was foundational in drug treatment was also core for the prenatal, birth, and infant therapy. I had been studying writing and tapes of William Emerson, PhD, a pioneer in the birth trauma healing work, for healing cesarean and cord trauma.
Emerson said that after a session of exploring and healing an aspect of their birth experience, a baby or child always completes a monumental task. I found that to be true for myself as an adult and consistently as a therapist. For example, I had a fifteen-month-old client in 2004 who was unable to even crawl and “no medical reason” could be determined. She was very efficient at rolling across the room, as sad as it was to watch. After two sessions where we addressed her birth experience with epidural, she crawled and shortly walked. Over and over I saw this, and I also experienced it - an adult version.
True to being a baby born by forceps, before I left for my first Womb Surround, I set myself up to do the hardest thing (2 faces) within the hard thing of taking first art class since college - an oil portrait class. I had to do TWO faces, because one might be doable, be easy. That IS the forceps born brain.
As in my birth, I tried to quietly leave, and instead of being forced and “jerked around” like I usually experienced (birth and life), Vin gently midwifed me through that day, as I did a portrait of me and my recently divorced ex - from our wedding day, of course.
Right when I was calculating in my head what supplies I had not used and could return, Vin asked me how it was going. I told him, “I was just calculating ….” and in a tai chi kind of move, he picked up one of the brown pencils and he went over my lines on the canvas, and the faces popped out. I stayed. I continued to work with Vin for a few months. That portrait now belongs to Sparky’s Ice Cream (and portrait) parlor in Columbia, MO.
I had been playing with trees for my logo and brochures. 2000.
During the development of my website in 2003, I found that painting while writing was very helpful to my process.
As I studied craniosacral I also returned to playing with my art again. The piece on the left is on my birthday, November, 2002. I had a private retreat day in the Sierra Foothills of California at a friend’s.
This is called Safe in the Mother-Father. That day, the healing happening in the Castellino program led me to decide to return to the midwest to be with my mother and father in their last years; and to be with them in their passing in the way they didn’t get to bring me through. This led to doing my film about fathers at birth. It also came to be that I was the only one of six children present with my dad in the last two weeks of his life. Midwifing him to the next world as we didn’t get to be at my birth. Keeping him safe in the medical system. It was extraordinary.
In 2006 I co-wrote the Safe Baby Resolution that was introduced into the Hawaii legislature and while in Los Angeles to present to the Association for Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Health I met Shiloh McCloud, visionary artist. Her artwork was showing at the congress and her images of the many expressions of the Feminine touched me deeply. I began to follow her and I did her Legendary Self online course in 2010. She Who Rides Ahead is the painting on the right.
Earlier that year I sent an edit of my film to Jody McLaughlin, publisher of Compleat Mother Magazine. She called me in tears saying, “You are riding so far ahead of everyone that most people don’t even see your dust.” That touched me deeply and has sustained me many times in my journey.
““America is under the mind control of the medical-political establishment and it begins with the disruption of the mother-baby relationship at birth.””
Around that time, Shiloh suggested doing a right-brain activity upon waking up, in order to activate the right brain first. I decided to do a doodle every morning. This began my journey to creating my current Soul Portraiture.
I used to doodle ALL the time, especially in meetings or situations where I was really listening and present. At a big meeting if I was actually paying attention, processing it through all of the layers of my thinking, I was doodling. If I appeared to be listening, I probably wasn’t. I was probably thinking about what a waste of human and financial resources this meeting is; and, I was more likely mentally calculating the cost of the meeting in salaries and what that money could have been used for to support a child and their family. How much food, how many shoes or coats, car repairs, and sometimes even how many students could have had a semester of tuition at a community college.