Who Am I?

If you are reading this site, you may wonder who I am.  

For about 40 years, I have written stories, poems, memoirs, features, reviews and other pieces focusing on women’s spirituality for a variety of feminist literary, art, and spirituality publications. My work has appeared in The Goddess Pages, Feminism and Religion,  Return to Mago, SageWoman, Moondance, the We’Moon calendars, Matrifocus, The Beltane Papers, and Women Artists News, and in a number of book anthologies, among others. I have also given poetry readings and workshops.  

I aspirationally see my writing as a bridge between everyday life now and a world where all people believe that they and all other beings are sacred, everyone is respected for who they are, love is unconditional, and creativity is an everyday occurrence. My writing has focused on goddess myths and practices as well as spirituality in women’s everyday lives because I believe that recovering these traditions and uplifting women is essential to building this bridge.  

Over the years I’ve further come to understand that among the primary barriers to this better future world is a lack of true, expansive community, a way of life that respects and values our interdependence and essential connection with other people and all living beings, including the Earth. I see this need for community everyday in the intense sense of isolation experienced by many people I meet and the great anguish this causes, the objectification of our environment and other people, and more. Of course, many cultures, past and present, especially Indigenous cultures, understand and have a long tradition of being in community and those of us not from these cultures have much to learn from them.

As I’ve studied ancient cultures over the years, especially those revering the female divine and honoring women’s equality, I’ve seen important lessons on regaining the way of being in community that we lost. I’m working on gathering those insights into short essays (usually posted a number of times a year on Feminism and Religion or on this site) that I hope to one day compile into a book. The essays generally focus on my own European heritage so as not to speak for those from other cultures, but also include how these lessons echo those from traditions from all over our planet.

While we rebuild our foundation, we also need to heal from the traumas of the past, both individually and multi-generationally, and to re-envision how we perceive the world and what we want our world to be so that we can create a way of being in community that works for all of us in the 21st century. This I seek to do primarily through poetry and fiction, which is usually posted monthly now on Return to Mago or on this site. Much of my previous fiction in this vein was published in The Goddess Pages. These may morph into a novel someday!

I’m also a student drummer, learning to play a drum set and various hand drums. I find that music can express what words often can’t, while words can express what music can’t. So I am experimenting with pairing my writing with original compositions, or sometimes just writing compositions for fun! You can find these in the Library.

When I’m not doing these activities, I am usually gardening in my yard, which I am working to make into a little sanctuary for native plants, birds, insects, and animals.