My life has carried me through very different human worlds: academia and addiction, grief and recovery, religious certainty and spiritual questioning, solitude and community. Each has taught me something, especially the experiences that brought me undone.
This life shapes the way I approach contemplation and spiritual accompaniment. I’m less interested in offering easy answers than in creating room for people to remain with the questions, notice what is stirring beneath the surface, and approach the divided places within themselves gently.
I believe every person possesses an inherent dignity, even while struggling, unraveling, or ashamed. I also believe growth does not require us to reject who we have been. Sometimes what now constrains us once helped us survive. Loosening those protections takes time, safety, and love.
Experience & Formation
I did not arrive at this work by a straightforward path. I hold a master’s degree in history and completed the coursework for a doctorate before addiction carried my life in another direction. Recovery did not return me to the person I had been. It opened a different life, one shaped by contemplation, service, and a growing trust in what can emerge from places that once seemed lost.
I currently serve as Director of the Nazareth Retreat Center in Kentucky. I am a Veriditas-trained labyrinth facilitator and am completing an internship in spiritual direction. My work is also grounded in lived recovery and in accompanying women affected by addiction—in treatment settings, recovery communities, and jail.
What You’ll Find Here
Here, I write from the meeting places of contemplation and real life: recovery, grief, spiritual practice, creativity, nature, and the questions that resist easy answers. I hope this can be a place where complexity is not treated as failure and where the sacred is allowed to appear in unexpected forms.
