About Me

I have been teaching writing for most of my adult life, in elementary schools, in colleges, in people’s homes, in hotel lobbies, in quiet corners of restaurants, and once on the rooftop bar of an L.A. hotel. These days I do most of my work by phone or Zoom. In many ways, the phone is a marvelous way of working together because it’s so intimately focused on voice. 

I see myself as a disrupter. I look for what end up as blocks in people’s speech and in their writing, and I ask questions, looking to uncover their heart’s truths, for it is in the core of who you are where we find the seeds of the most wonderful stories. The stories of you. Your stories. You. 

Often the very thing that would make powerful stories are the things around which people feel shame or disregard, and I serve as a mirror to show them: This! This! This is what is important! This is the magic, not the poison.

Ultimately, I see you as a tube of light. It is my job to help clear blocks that keep your light from shining as brightly as it could. Why else are we on this planet if it is not to show up for others as our most authentic self? We are our own gift to the world, the unique presence and voice of us, and if we keep our light dim, then we die and no one, not even ourselves, would ever have fully experienced the wonder of who we are.  

My mother died before she finished her own book, before she bloomed fully into her own dreams. This means I saw my mother die before she shone as brightly as I believed she could have. And, so, what I could not do for her—help her to fully show up in the world—I do for myself and others. 

But I also saw that while my mother was writing, she was living her dream, and, in that way, it was inconsequential that she didn’t get to see her book in fully realized form. It was the process of writing that had brought her more fully home to herself, and this, a woman living out her deepest desires, was a joy to witness.

My mother often hummed as she wrote. 

I would like you to live in the hum. Yes, the writing is important, but I see that writing is a powerful way to access positive self-regard and straight-up joy. I am more about the process, the importance of recognizing that this is your life and you giving yourself permission to fully show up than I am in the importance of producing polished final products.

I’d rather see you create what feels like a big mess but that feels wonderful and true to you than watch you struggle to hammer out something you think is perfect but that leaves you feeling hollow and filled with anxiety. 

What I have found most true as a person who realized her life dream and finished a book is that the greatest reward of the whole process was the people I found along the way who helped me find the strength to grow and continue and to keep writing. 

Collaboration is the bomb. 

Let’s play.