Trauma offers two choices: succumb or resurrect. I chose resurrection and worked to bring my deadened heart back to life. I breathed and stretched and sweated and grew to trust my body, voice, vision and soul. Anxiety and fear were chased away by respect and awe. I grew strong from the inside out, like a plant, rooted, thirsty, turned toward the sun. These are the pieces I wove into one:  

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Mind:

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My jobs in the world have been many: clinical social worker and therapist in private practice, corporate media lobbyist, yoga teacher, writer, director of communications and outreach, speech writer, executive producer and doctoral student. I adore academic rigor but am a kinesthetic learner. Touch, smell and sweat are my glue, and dreams offer me blueprints for growth.

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Body:

 

I have run thousands of miles in search of myself including completion of the Washington, D.C. Marine Corp Marathon, several half-marathons and too many 10-Ks to count. I have down-dogged my body on mats all over the country enough to earn my yoga teacher certification which provides me the honor of teaching three to four yoga classes each week at LA Fitness in Southern Arizona, in private practice and on Zoom. The healing power of water welcomed me home during the pandemic, and I now log an hour in the lap lane at least three times a week. Turn on music and I will dance, sweat and launch into song even though I can’t really sing. 

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Emotion:

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My heart has been broken, loved, fractured, shriveled, adored and rejected. I never gave birth, which explains my extensive work experience. I am the oldest daughter of five and helped her mother with diaper-changing and feeding, which explains never giving birth. I have witnessed and been awed by death’s mystery when it claimed my mother, father and beloved younger brother.

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Passion:

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Dreams, my greatest source of self-wisdom, were a gift I received from my mother and grandmother. I studied with a Jungian analyst in Washington, D.C. and completed a Winter Course at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, which gifted me clear images of a female-loving God created from my own imagination and experience. My hunger for female divinity led me, in 1995, on a journey to the Temple of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna at a week-long course at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, led by the actress Olympia Dukakis. 

 

During the pandemic, my abiding need to find female-loving god-spirit inside the Christian faith I grew up in led me to study with divinity scholars Meggan Watterson and Cynthia Bourgeault. These gifted women led me to the Gospels of Mary Magdalene, Philip and Thomas, written soon after Jesus walked the earth but not included in today’s Bible, and landed me home, finally, in sacred teachings that sang the praises of my female body, sexuality, soul and self. I felt seen. The first step in claiming all of me.