My favorite place to live is on the edge, in those places where seemingly separate entities join, blend, bump into each other and sometimes collide – which is the best place to create something new. There, at that farthest possible point, that meeting place of two worlds, I gather treasures from the tide line, that place of joining and connection, to share with others.

I am an Expressive Arts Facilitator, consultant and mentor; a writer and photographer – and most of all a person who has made my own road through life by walking it (in the slightly altered words of poet Antonio Machado).

I live in gratitude and amazement for this world – and for the wild beauty, capacity and potential of the human spirit and its unfolding, which I am gifted to see in my life and in my work. I am filled with awe and respect for the people I have the privilege to work with, as I witness them open to their personal truth and chart their own path in this world.

In one sense, all my life has been a training for what I do. In a more practical sense, I completed a two-year training program in Expressive Arts at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island. There I developed my focus of merging Expressive Arts with the natural world. Over the years I’ve sought out the training that I need – in creative writing, photography, methods of group work, approaches to connecting with nature.

I have over 20 years experience creating and leading various arts-based workshops – including creative writing and photography. I’ve worked with both youth and adults in varied situations including with immigrants and refugees, inner-city youth, in rural Mexico and with children who have experienced abuse and other trauma. I’ve presented at conferences on The Healing Power of Art, and trained teachers, counselors, therapists and others in ways to integrate the arts into their work. I am author of 8 plays, numerous articles and short fiction. My photos have been shown in galleries, accompanied articles and been used in websites.

Through my life, I’ve experienced my own shatterings – and found ways to create out of the broken pieces something new and astonishing. I’ve learned to navigate my own passage between joy and sorrow, hope and despair; created my own ongoing conversation with nature; discovered ways to live my gifts into this world. It’s a continuing journey – for me, and I believe for everyone.

I offer gratitude for the many teachers throughout my life – not all of them human. In particular I want to thank four extraordinary teachers I have had the opportunity to know and learn from, whose visionary ideas have informed and shaped my own life path and offerings: Barbara Ganim (Director of the Expressive Arts program at Salve Regina University), Joanna Macy (Environmental scholar, creator of The Work that Reconnects), Bill Plotkin (founder of Animas Valley Institute, author of Soulcraft), and Annie Bloom (Mentor and Guide with Animas Valley Institute).