As a business website owner, there is maintenance to do and links to check on, stuff to update, and other things that need purging or recycling. This makes sense since this website is the print version of a home for my mind and heart. As I followed all of the links around, I realized that several of them do not exist anymore, including a few of the ones listed here (sadness!). So, housekeeping.

Once upon a time ago, AJ Rasmussen, owner of the metaphysical shop, Vibez, invited me to be a guest on her radio show, Soul Wanderings. As part of the process, I was to submit a "bio" in advance, a condensed version of my life with highlights and bullet points. Small problem, I don't do condensed or "less words" very well. If you have been with me for a while, you know how much I love the feel and texture of words!

The archive link to the broadcast, which was amazing and fun, no longer exists. However, I used my very best Toastmaster skills and managed to trim things down for my radio debut. Below is a portion of what I shared that evening.

~✽~

I am a story-teller-healer. I weave energy and frequencies with words. The first word at the basis of my journey is Joy. My grandmother's name is Joyce, as is my mother's middle name, my own, both of my birth daughters, and a granddaughter. We are woven together by the simple understanding that there is Joy in this world to be had and the instinctive desire over five generations of mothers to seek improvement and growth to pass on to the next generation of daughters. In the roots of my grandmother Joyce, my dealings with the unseen, etheric, and energetic world began to take shape. She used to hide "thought-forms" of objects for us to find in her backyard and then give us "L-rods," a type of dowsing stick, to go and find them. It was great fun for us as grandchildren, and although we knew it was odd compared to the things our friends did with their grandparents, it made a happy, fairy-like sense in her realm.

Our Nana also learned rudimentary forms of “Westernized Reiki” energy healing techniques, which were used on and taught to us. In addition, there were herbal remedies and the energy of pyramids. In my pre-teen years, I could see the white, hazy glow around people, which I understood to be a "reflection of a person's soul or spirit." As the skill developed, I could also see it around inanimate objects. As I got a little older and my parents’ religious training influenced much of my thinking, this skill frightened me, as it was NOT part of the teachings, and I felt that I was “wrong.” I forced my gift of seeing auras to recede and fade. I stopped using the other skills I had learned, thinking that would make me more appropriate. But Spirit-skills do not easily banish, as I learned a few years later!

Teenage rebellion - what a funny ritual we have created for ourselves now that there are no actual "rites of passage" to help us understand our growth and wisdom. I rebelled against my religion, the authority figures, and ideas of what a "good girl" is. I dabbled intently in drugs, alcohol, and boys (rapidly graduating to men - even married ones). I say dabbled because I was never truly addicted to any of them, but all of them significantly damaged me, and it took quite a bit of healing and time to recover and finally discover Me. The process of doing so came with explosive outbursts of my Spirit-skills, reclaiming me and setting my feet on this Path.

The first one came on Labor Day weekend when I was 18 and met the 31-year-old man who would become my husband for the first time. I was at the top of a flight of stairs, and he was at the bottom. We were caught in some sort of tractor-beam time-warp that held us captive for several minutes until the people bottled up behind him got annoyed enough to push past him and break the spell.

The second one came that December when the same man announced with frustration that he could no longer stand by and watch me self-destruct as I threw myself into more dangerous situations. As the door of my apartment closed behind him, I heard echoes of innumerable doors slamming shut, over and over and over. I knew something catastrophic had happened. I cried and grieved. Two weeks later, I woke up knowing he was close by. I felt him as if I could turn a corner fast enough and collide with him all that day. When he called "just to check and see if I was okay," I tore down all of the walls, threw out all of the beliefs that I was "only good for one thing” in the lives of men, and opened my heart to him.

That was in 1986, and we have been together ever since. He didn't change me or expect me to change for him. He could see through all of the lies and thinking errors I had used to decorate my life, and he recognized the truth that was Me. Being held in his love is like being made of crystal, held up in bright sunshine. I was shot through with rainbows, and I could finally see and feel Myself. I grew capable and confident because I saw myself reflected as such in his eyes when he looked at me. I still do.

Leaping ahead, I returned to the religious teachings I had been raised with (which baffles me now!), had three more children to add to my husband’s two, homeschooled the children, worked in scouting, and supported my husband’s construction business - all the while feeling like there was more. I studied my religion deeply and fiercely, investing everything into the ideas taught there. Simultaneously, I became increasingly restless and dissatisfied as the feelings of knowing there was so much MORE continued to increase and ricochet around in my heart.

The disparity between what my religion taught and my own experience with Divinity had grown so great that something had to change - or else I would break.

People in those situations are often counseled by church leadership to put their unanswered questions on a “spiritual shelf” to be answered by God later. My shelf was loaded to an extreme. And then, one day, it fell.

Having a faith crisis is an interesting ride. Everything that you held dear suddenly crashes all around you in a debris field of dead beliefs and dreams. Stepping out from it is terribly liberating. I use the word “terribly” here because it was beautifully grace-filled and expanded me in a rather painful manner. Most forms of growth are filled with growing pains, I suppose, and happily, I’ve never regretted my choice to move on, nor have I looked back! I have watched my parents transition to the other side at this phase of my life, and I feel their great love for me and their input.

Grandchildren fill happy hours with more love than I could have imagined. I can see the hazy white glow of auras again and understand why they often appear around inanimate objects. I’ve enjoyed training in several different energy healing modalities, including being a Certified Hypnotherapist, a ThetaHealing instructor with additional training in Intuitive Anatomy, a Usui Reiki Master/Instructor, and Dr. Corey Sondrup’s GAMMA techniques. I’ve also studied Hal & Sidra Stone’s Voice Dialogue, Michael Newton’s Soul Journey series, Carol Tuttle’s Energy Profiling System, and several other techniques and therapies. I’m an avid follower of the teachings of Abraham Hicks and joyously on the lookout for more tools and skills all the time, earning the label of “eclectic lightworker and intuitive.”

My primary goals are 1) to find Joy in my Journey and 2) assist others in their quest to do the same. I offer “tech support for the soul”™ as I combine the healing techniques into one practice, creating a menu tailored to each client. We do not have the power to heal or change things in another’s life, but we can hold a focus of someone’s well-being so powerfully strong that they can feel that frequency and grasp it for themselves.

In my sessions, I intuitively connect to the well-being flowing to my clients from Source and their own Spirit Guide/ Inner Being and ask how I can be of benefit. The answers that come forward are individualized for where the person is currently in their journey. I function as a sort of Tour Guide or Tech Support as I receive and feel those answers and translate and weave them into words, which then evoke images that speak directly to my client’s desire. Through some of the techniques listed above and any I receive in the moment, I then witness my client receive this information on all levels of their Being and make the desired shift in their belief system and understanding.

Helping someone feel their worth and fall in love with who they really are, sensing the glory and sweetness of their truth, is the most profound and sacred experience I have known. My Journey-Quest is for each of us to recognize this pure, Source-energy Love for ourselves and “own it and wear it out the door.”

That, for me, is absolute JOY.

So that is my life’s work, ministry, and path: to help others as they release the resistance that encumbers their lives, setting them free to find and choose Joy.

And so it is!    

❦