If you are reading this site, you may wonder who I am.
For 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 SageWoman, Feminism and Religion, Return to Mago, The Goddess Pages, Moondance, the We’Moon calendar, Matrifocus, The Beltane Papers, The Little Magazine, and Women Artists News, among others, and in a number of book anthologies. 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. Much of 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.
My writing has been informed by my 40-year career in human services and public health programming, from which I am now retired, and volunteer work I continue to do. I have served in large cities, suburbs, and small towns working to build and implement the community-based structures that support the physical, mental, and emotional well being of all members of the community, including those most marginalized and at risk of not having their most basic needs met. As I contemplated the cause of the suffering I was witnessing and trying to address, I realized that bringing together my life experience and writing to offer new perspectives on successful communities was what I can best offer the world at this moment.
When not writing, I am usually gardening in my yard, which I am working to make into a little sanctuary for native plants, birds, insects, and animals or out and about in the small town where I live doing this and that.
