Hi, I’m the owner of Partners in Mindful Living, which is the fruit of what feels like a lifetime gardening project. After growing up in the advertising and marketing worlds with executive positions at two prominent agencies, one day I woke up and had an epiphany. (The truth is I was on my first vacation in five years, laying by a pool, when I had the epiphany.) I realized that if I went back to school and studied human behavior, I could spend all my time doing what I love—collaborating with people who want to get ‘unstuck’. So that’s exactly what I did! I enrolled in Northeastern Illinois University’s graduate program and received a Masters degree in Counseling. I was preparing the ground for my garden.
For the next 19 years I tilled, planted, watered and babied that garden. After graduating I spent two years as an Employee Assistance Counselor for Central Dupage Hospital’s Behavioral Health Center. Then I moved to the DuPage County Health Department in 1994 where I spent the next 17 years honing my clinical and supervisory skills, working with individuals, families and support groups as well as providing clinical supervision to a wonderful team of professionals. I ‘graduated’ from the Health Department in 2011 to expand my private practice. I remain pretty much over-the-moon with happiness around that decision.
I’ve been a student all my life, both informally and formally. I can’t imagine not being passionately immersed in learning something. And I continue to pinch myself and feel tremendous gratitude for the doorways that are opening through the internet and exposure to a whole world of brilliant thinkers and writers I’d otherwise not have exposure to.
In 2006 I was exposed to ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and it was another epiphany. A bit like finding the perfect plant food for my maturing garden. For the first time I had a language to explain the methodology I had always used as a therapist/coach. ACT, with its focus on acceptance and mindfulness, is compatible with how I try to live my personal life, as well as with who I am as a therapist and coach.
Mindfulness, or awareness, is something that I’ve explored since I was 14. I continue to be amazed by the seemingly sudden and explosive global adoption of principles that have been around for over 6,000 years.
I read somewhere that there are three necessary states for the process of growth: education, inspiration and empowerment. And like that author, in the course of my career as a therapist and coach, I have moved from wanting to educate, to wanting to inspire, to where I am today, which is wanting to empower.
We are all so much more capable than we dare to allow ourselves to imagine. My deepest desire is to help you imagine.