My journey began as an outward adventure around the world and led to an inward excursion to find out who I truly am.

I grew up in rural Missouri with conservative parents, where every lesson seemed designed to teach me how to run a household and support a man. I learned to knit, sew, cook, and clean—but something in me rebelled against this prescribed path. I wanted out. I wanted to find my own way. I wanted a real voice.

First, I had to reach escape velocity.

Once I did, I found myself in newsrooms across the globe—Tokyo during Emperor Hirohito’s death, London at the Financial Times during Princess Diana’s tragic end, wandering through Southeast Asia as a travel writer, crafting stories in Seattle’s rain. For a decade, I lived and breathed journalism, editing Japan’s largest daily newspaper, writing hundreds of articles that appeared in newspapers and magazines worldwide.

I was living my dream of independence, chasing facts across continents, my hands flying across keyboards as I captured the world’s urgent stories.

When Everything Fell Apart

But in the middle of what looked like success, something inside me began to crack open. I felt a burning call—urgent and undeniable—to leave it all behind. The tyranny of facts was suffocating the part of me that longed for mystery, for beauty, for something beyond the linear world I’d built my life around.

My career began to unravel. It shattered into a million pieces. I had to go on a journey—not across oceans this time, but into the depths of my own soul. I had to find out who I truly was beneath all the identities I’d collected.

What followed was my own dark night of the soul, lasting three years. Everything I had defined as “mine” was taken away. I had to start from scratch and build. But build what? Who was I without my byline, without my press credentials, without the adrenaline of breaking news?

The Mystical Awakening

I’ve spent decades studying writing, art, and mystic modalities—from tarot to past-life regression. What began as desperate seeking became passionate study. I dove deep into tarot, shamanism, past-life work. I became Reiki certified, learned energy healing, explored every mystical door I could find.

I wasn’t just collecting new skills—I was excavating my authentic self, layer by layer, like an archaeologist of the soul.

In my novels, I tell this story through Pearl Swinton, a former journalist like myself who spends years trying to outrun her psychic visions. Pearl’s journey through Earth, Air, Fire, and Water mirrors my own—the slow, sometimes painful process of accepting the mystic I’d always been but had buried under deadlines and facts.

Building My Sacred Space

For my 50th birthday, I built myself a yurt art studio in the Oregon woods—my own sacred circle where I could finally let my soul speak instead of my intellect. Here, surrounded by trees and mud and the wild beauty of Oregon, I honor the sacred feminine in all her wounded wisdom. My hands, once confined to keyboards, now know the sacred joy of brush and paint, of pen and keyboard, the holy mess of creation itself.

Who I Am Now

Today, I write, paint, and coaching people all over the world in the art of writing a book. I live by the core values of creativity, authenticity, purpose, and contribution. I spend every day merging mysticism with creativity—writing novels and memoir, painting abstract landscapes that hold secrets logic cannot touch, and yes, coaching others who find themselves where I once was: successful on the outside but starving on the inside.

I’ve guided over 8,000 people through their own transformations using the same tools that saved me. My mission isn’t just professional—it’s deeply personal. I provide these experiences because I needed them desperately once, and I know others do too.

The Truth I’ve Learned

The journey from reporter of facts to channeler of truth taught me this: the most important stories are the ones that transform us in the telling. My dark night of the soul, which I detail in my fourth novel WATER, showed me that sometimes our greatest breakdowns become our most sacred breakthroughs.

I learned that leaving the linear world doesn’t mean abandoning rigor—it means applying that same journalistic dedication to exploring the infinite landscape of soul and spirit. I learned that you can be both deeply mystical and utterly practical, both a serious artist and a playful seeker.

Most importantly, I learned that finding out who you truly are is the greatest adventure of all.

From this paint-splattered yurt in the Oregon woods, I continue that adventure every single day, and I invite others to join me in discovering what wants to be born through them.