Who am I?

I graduated with my Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology in 1988 from Western Michigan University. I worked briefly for community mental health and then was recruited to work for the state prison system. I was taught about how to work with criminals and specifically violent and sexually violent male offenders.

For a few years, I relocated to Tennessee. I went there initially to become the Program Director of a child abuse prevention program. But, I loved doing psychotherapy, so I returned to community mental health. Given my training and experience working with criminals, I was doing that again but with people in the community. I spent some time working in two different juvenile treatment programs for at risk teenagers or for those conviction of sexual crimes.

Due to family health concerns, I returned to Michigan. I worked again for community mental health and my clients were almost all on probation or parole. I worked doing jail mental health during this time as well. I ran a sexual offender treatment program for probationers. I had the opportunity to move to the Upper Peninsula, a beautiful part of Michigan in 2010 and returned to working in the prison system.

In 2022, due to my own health issues, I retired from prison psychology work.

I have been psychic since I was a teenager. I have at times sat these skills aside and ignored them. But, they have helped me with my psychotherapy work throughout the majority of my career. In 2015, I had a “dark night of the soul” kind of situation that lasted about two years. During that time, I became abundantly aware of unhealed aspects of my inner world. I had been severely physically and emotionally abused as a child. There was also medical and physical neglect when I was very young. I had used the typical psychotherapy techniques, as a patient, and as self-help work for decades. I was functional but I was not thriving.

I discovered that with energy healing and inner parts work, I could reach a deeper level of healing then I had ever experienced before. Is spent the time from 2016 to 2022, working on my own healing and writing a book on this healing technique. I tried it with others and found that it was helpful for many different situations.

For most of my adult life, I worked trying to prevent victims by intervening directly with violent men who had been conviction of crimes, some of those crimes were heinous. I worked in high security prisons. I ran sexual offender treatment programs. I have learned a great deal about how criminals think as they plan for their violent acts. How the treat others in relationships as well.

I am excited to pivot my work, to help survivors of violence to do more than survive but to thrive.

Blooming Life is about building the life you were always meant to have. I am excited to work with people to heal at a deep level and thrive.