My blood ancestors come from many traditions, including Welsh, Irish, Scots, and Cherokee. My roots are in the Earth, and my community is all Earth-honoring people.

I have lived my entire life on a beautiful peninsula surrounded by the sacred and magificent Great Lakes.  When viewed on a map, this peninsula has the form of a hand.  I experience this image as the imprint of Creator surrounded by life-giving, 'sweet' waters.

In l984, I earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in English Language and Literature.  For many years I wrote poetry and taught writing, experiences which became, for me, ways of contacting and trusting visions, personal voices, and true life-paths.  I came early to the conviction that 'following our bliss,' as Joseph Campbell so beautifully advised, is the heart of true happiness, and I have always sought to impart this confidence to my children and to my University students, numbering now in the thousands.

Between l983 and 2005, I was an apprentice to our greatest teacher--Life--as a mother living with her children.  During that time, my training and walking included giving birth at home, living in the woods, growing and learning from plants, homeschooling, preparing food and learning its healing properties, listening to animals and birds, receiving instruction from my teacher-- Crow--,watching stars, learning astrology, journeying on the inner planes, and trusting the dreamtime.

Along the way, I benefited from a beautiful meditation practice, from yoga and dance, from training in process acupressure, from many teachers--plant, animal, elemental, and human-- both in and out of body, and from mystical experiences recorded in my poetry.

Since 2000, I have been traveling to South America to learn the ancient mystical tradition of the Andes Mountains.