MY desire is to help you bloom to your full potential.

Each year, in my Catholic grade school classroom, a parish priest would come to visit. He would look at the little boys and ask many of them, individually, what they wanted to be when they grew up.

After, he would look across the heads of the little girls, all seated behind the boys, shortest to tallest (so that the shortest girls sat just behind the tallest boys), and he would waive his hand above us, as he proclaimed, "You will ALL be wives and mothers. Unless you have a vocation." And on the inside, my little hand would go up, crying, "Me! Me! I have a vocation!"

But he meant the convent, and I did not have a vocation to the nunnery.

I woke every morning, and fell asleep each night, talking to God.

I knew I had a vocation to the ministry.

By age 11, realizing that, because of my sex, my church would never allow me to be a priest, I began to search out 'other' spiritual traditions.

In those pre-Internet days, through books, I began my spiritual journey.

I explored whatever I could lay my hands on of other perspectives: indigenous spiritualities, Christian reincarnation, astrology, divination, Buddhism, Spiritualism, the Old Ways of European tribal spiritualities, New Age Thought, Judaism, and other forms of Christianity, including Evangelical Pentecostalism - where I eventually found a tradition that would ordain a woman.

Because of being "a girl," in adolescence and adulthood, I experienced the realities of women and girls around me: lack of autonomy over their own reproductive lives, barriers in employment (sex-segregated employment ads and the gender pay gap), lack of support for female college education, sexual harassment on the street and in the workplace, disrespectful dating situations, sexual assault, not being listened to by the medical system in labor and delivery (as I almost lost my life ), and the tragedy of losing my child (to their systemic deafness).

But I found my way to becoming licensed, then ordained, and into my vocation - working as a pastor, a hospital chaplain, and a counselor.

Yet, I still did not find an actually affirming place for women in ministry. The subordination of women is still built into mistranslations of holy books that poison our theologies.

So, it was that my experiences in Christian ministry drove me back to the realities of gender inequality.

After many years in pastoral and counseling ministry, I returned to college, to pursue an understanding of the history, the struggle, and the path forward. There, I completed a bachelor's in sociology and anthropology, a minor in African American Studies and another in Women's Studies. I followed with graduate work in Women's Studies and sociology - concentrating in race/ethnicity and gender/sexuality.

Along this journey, I have written books that address the ways in which women in the U.S., and LGBTQ+ people in religion, continue to be discriminated against. In my writing - and counseling - I encourage those of us with these life experiences to get up and go again.

Also, along this journey, I have moved forward in my ministerial vocation, as a spiritual counselor, who brings to YOUR journey a wealth of life experience and a breadth of academic knowledge - even as I affirm the deepest spiritual truths of YOUR religious and spiritual journey. In my counseling minister, I do my best to hear YOU without judgment.

And my ongoing connection to the Source that called me, and created us all, allows me to bring my intuition to the table to serve you - even as I help you learn how to hear your own intuition - so that together we may help YOU find YOUR own best path forward -

     as YOU bloom to YOUR full potential.