To me, being creative means daring to be messy and flawed, vulnerable and impulsive, outrageously adventurous and annoyingly stubborn. It means heading off into the great unknown without even an inkling of where you might wind up, trusting your own path regardless of what others think is right or wrong about it, and embodying a process of unfolding. Creativity is hardly ever a straightforward trek from point A to point B… rather it’s a practice… an ongoing exploration of the tangles and loopty-loops, fits and starts, and captures and releases that make us human. It requires a willingness to make a beeline toward uncertainty and fuck up from time to time, all while exercising radical self-compassion and considering ourselves worthy of our mistakes. 

I am a self-taught artist who likes to dabble in many different mediums, but I have a yen for pyrography and oil pastels.  I am also a writer, and after many years of composing blogs, short stories, poetry, and love letters, most of my energy these days is going toward the completion of my first book, a memoir about learning to unapologetically inhabit my raw and tender nature while recognizing my emotions as strength rather than weakness, and my dear connections to the two-legged, four-legged, and no-legged critters that have offered me their unconditional acceptance and wisdom along the way. 

I have spent much of my life teaching others about how creativity can empower them to venture out of the boxes they have lived in for as long as they can remember and play with their own wildness. And now in my mid-life, I am on a quest to free myself from my own cages, after lyme disease, a troubled teenager, an empty nest, and most recently, covid, shook up everything I thought I was. I am RE-DEFINING myself now, not to be confused with starting over or “re-invention,” for I have no need to burn away my past and make crazy big changes, but rather to see myself as enough, right now– as is– wounds, warts and all. Forever a work in progress.