My Story

Since childhood, I’ve had a strong connection to the land and the people that inhabited it before. We would search for arrowheads and speculate about the people who left them. I also felt a call to help people. This seemed associated with a diverse community but wasn’t part of the rural, middle Georgia farming area where I grew up. It had a spiritual quality that honored the sacred yet didn’t seem aligned with the Christian roots of my upbringing. It touched into my love of the sky and weather, the earth and water, and the plants and animals, and yet wasn’t fitting with the culture of my European ancestors. 

However, like many others, I moved on with my life with this unrequited sense in my heart. After a Western education and working in the city, I soon returned to graduate school to find a path to help people heal. I found this in psychology and worked for 25 years as a psychotherapist. But all along there was that buried longing. In my 40s and feeling flattened and empty, I wound up sitting in the client’s chair in the therapist’s office. As luck would have it, I had been guided to Paula Reeves, PhD. who ended up providing just the right mix of insight, broad knowledge, and what I now call elder wisdom. I began to understand that my longing was leading me to my path and destiny.

So when I read an article about pilgrimages to sacred mountains in an ancient spiritual tradition my attention was stirred. Following the threads that life provided in 1998, I was connected with shaman Don David Wiley and soon found myself fasting and praying on the shoulder of one of those sacred places in the central highlands of Mexico seeking a vision. And looking back, I see that this began a journey that indeed led me to my real life’s work. From that effort, I was guided to the village of Nepopualco in Morelos, Mexico, and to the doorway of the well-known Nahua healer and quiapaquiz (caller of sky waters) Don Lucio Campos Elizalde (1906 – 2005). He divined that the weather spirits and his tradition were calling me. This would lead to a formal initiation into this path in 1999 and in 2003 the establishment of a rain ceremonial group in Georgia honoring a sacred rain mountain, Tsantawu (Stone Mountain) that would help break a devastating multi-year drought afflicting the area. Now, groups of 40 to 50 people participate in twice-yearly ceremonies there.

Later, a healing path in that same Nahua tradition was opened to me. After nine years of pilgrimage and training, I was initiated as a Tepahtiani, or a traditional healer. It is this work that I offer today in service to people who seek deep healing themselves.

During the time of this life unfoldment, I also became a Firekeeper for an international organization called Sacred Fire and have continued to hold monthly fires in Carrollton, GA since my initiation in 2004. 

If you are interested in attending a Sacred Fire, please contact [email protected]

Within that same organization, I am the Director of LifeWays for Sacred Fire. In this position, I develop programs that teach about the process of realigning with the power and capacity of nature and the movements of one’s life through life cycle living, something all the ancestors deeply understood.

I am living my calling and look forward to helping serve you in your life walk.