about me, maybe more than you need to know:

THe big working of this site is spreading the spell of Waving goodbye to the Patriarchy, the Spell project I’ve been working on since 2017. read about it under Art Spells and join in. A unexpected by product is sharing and beginning to catalogue the many other art spells I create.

‘In Goddess religion death is not feared, but is understood to be a part of life, followed by birth and renewaL.’ Carol P. Christ

‘God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back.’ Gloria Steinem

“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” Albert Einstein

“When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.”
– Jean Shinoda Bolen

I was born smack dab in the middle of the 1950’s under the sign of Aquarius. Elvis was just beginning to roll his hips, Allen Ginsberg was finishing Footnote to Howl, and Betty Friedan was stewing in her kitchen. I was formed by my times, witnessing the assassinations of the 60’s and the Vietnam War on television and experiencing the cultural revolution as it unfolded.

“The artist’s job is to be a witness to his time in history.”

Robert Rauschenberg

What’s wrong with that quote? The “his”! During the 1970’s I rode the great second wave of feminism, creating and working at rape crisis centers and shelter homes for battered women, opening up to having my consciousness raised and imagining a world without patriarchy. My generation began to demand that we be witnesses to our own history. Some of us even began to call it herstory. We questioned everything. Even and maybe especially art.

The week I was to graduate with my B.A, my father suicided. Within a few months two other close family members died suddenly. It was a shamanic descent to the underworld that changed my life. I moved to a small artsy town on the Oregon Coast, a place of stunning beauty. I found comfort in tuning into the rhythm of tides and moon and like many women at that time, began to experience the Divine as female. And, I began to understand the world as a magical place. In my grief, and the integration of death into my life, my senses grew sharper. And art began to pour out of me.

“She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?'
'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.” 
― Terry Pratchett

Moving to San Francisco in 1981 I began to learn my craft as a psychotherapist while also throwing myself into the blossoming feminist spirituality movement and anti-nuclear/peace activism. I interned at the Women’s Institute for Mental Health and then got hired to co-create and lead the first program for survivors of childhood sexual abuse in Northern California. At the same time, I was honing my ability to create public rituals that also were political actions. As therapist, activist, and artist, my intention has remained the same, which is to change consciousness at will. This itself is one popular definition of magic.

My most significant art project over the last 3 decades has been my home. It’s a perpetural work in progress, a constant curation of beauty and politics, with invocations everywhere. It’s been the place I raised a son and the first place I’ve had my own art studio. It’s a four story Victorian that I bought with friends and over the decades has housed many activists, artists and healers.

During those decades I continued on in my private psychotherapy practice, being named in the 2013 Bay Guardian’s Best of the Bay list as “Best Therapist”. I developed trainings for activists in the late 90’s for what I called “magical activism”, teaching activists how to work with the elements of life, stay grounded, and feel the ancestors at their back. During my long stint as Co-President on a board for an LGBTQ Therapy Association, I helped pitch a bill to outlaw conversion therapy for minors. That bill was taken up and became the first bill passed into law that shut down conversion therapy for minors. And, for three decades I’ve taught workshops nationally and internationally on the use of ritual, symbol, and magic. Currently I am instrumental in putting on A Fool’s Journey, an annual restorative retreat focusing on the Tarot. It’s been a busy lifetime!

Whatever I do as therapist, ritualist, artist, my organizing principle is spreading the mighty spell of Waving Goodbye to the Patriarchy and encourage others to participate. Waving Goodbye to White Supremacy is an integral part of Waving Goodbye to the Patriarchy and my work reflects that. We all have work to do. To that end, I’m providing information on how to make them and if you don’t have the time or inclination you can buy one here.