WHO AM I?

As a lifetime writer, an award-winning faculty member at Montana State University, and the creator of Imagine That! Coaching, I am a true believer in reclaiming one’s power through storytelling. My mission to create verdant circles where participants tell stories that matter, stories that heal, stories that lift individuals into greater awareness, empathy, and compassion, is evidenced in my teaching, coaching, and writing. My work is built on Maya Angelou’s famous adage “Stories heal.”

I facilitate workshops on Poetic Medicine, The Artist’s Way, the Hero’s Journey in Life Stories, the Art and Craft of Writing Legacy Letters for organizations such as Montana’s Cancer Support Community and OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) at MSU.

I conduct rich and vibrant Creativity Salons with community members that support women in all sorts of creative pursuits. My slogan: “If you can conceive it, I can help you achieve it.”

For more than two decades with Go Girl! Travel, I trekked across Ireland, Italy, Turkey, and England with young women doing rites of passage work, helping each to build agency to become empowered women.

Excerpts from two memoirs We Didn’t Start the Fire and Dartboard Destinations: Misadventures in Travels have been published in freelance journals and blogs. My scholarly writing has been published in academic journals.

A favorite creation of mine that goes along with a workshop I facilitated for many years is 40 Days to Becoming a Virtuoso of Gratitude. Helping participants establish lifelong and life-changing practices of appreciative gratitude is core to my offerings. My blog, “Joyful Manifesting,” has helped seekers from all around the world bring dreams into reality.

My most recent work, a three-part historical novel, Lost and Found in the 1960s: Standing in the Shadows of Love, Diamonds and Rust, and Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road, is forthcoming.

When I’m not writing, I’m busy playing hide-n-go-seek with my granddaughter, strumming my uke with friends, or trekking with my dogs in the mountains of Montana, enjoying the beauty and wonder of the last best place on earth.

All of my work is in the service of healing to build greater understanding and compassion.