Becoming Your Guide: My Journey through Healing to Wild Woman Rituals

There are moments in life that split us open so completely that nothing is ever the same again. For me, that moment came when I was thirteen—the day my parents pulled me out of school to tell me my mother had stage‑four breast cancer. Seven months later, I was standing beside her hospital bed, kissing her goodbye. In an instant, the world that had felt safe, warm, and centered around her love became unrecognizable.

Losing her didn’t just break my heart. It fractured my sense of identity, belonging, and self-worth. It created a wound I would spend decades trying to heal.

After her death, I moved across the country hoping to find a surrogate mother in her sister. Instead, I found more loss, more betrayal, and experiences no child should ever have to navigate. I was indoctrinated into the role of the other woman, used by men who should have protected me like a sister and instead started illicit affairs. By sixteen, I had already learned to equate love with being chosen, desired, or useful.

I learned to perform, to seduce, to cling—anything to recreate the feeling of being unconditionally loved the way I once was by my mother.

That pattern followed me into adulthood. Relationship after relationship became an unconscious attempt to heal a wound I didn’t yet understand. I sought security in people who couldn’t offer it. I mistook intensity for intimacy. I lost myself in dynamics that mirrored my earliest heartbreaks.

Some relationships were chaotic, some were tender, some were devastating—but all of them were teachers. Each loss left a different imprint. Some hollowed me out. Others cracked me open to new truths.

Becoming a mother added another layer—a fatherless daughter raising a motherless daughter. I built walls around my heart, even as I longed for connection. I escaped into substances, into co‑dependence, into the familiar ache of trying to earn love instead of receiving it freely.

And yet, even in the midst of all that pain, I was always drawn to creating experiences for others—spaces where people could feel held, connected, and alive. Long before I understood my own healing path, I was already guiding others.

During the years I spent as a journalist, I learned to tell other people's stories and give readers a glimpse into the trials and tribulations that made them successful. At Vail Resorts, I led group tours and curated unforgettable mountain experiences for travelers from around the world. I learned how to read a group’s energy, how to create a sense of belonging among strangers, and how to transform an ordinary outing into something memorable.

Later, as Executive Director of Valhalla Tahoe, I helped create magical, immersive events that blended nature, art, music and community. Those years taught me how to shape atmosphere, how to hold space, and how to bring people together in ways that felt meaningful and alive.

I didn’t know it then, but I was training for the work I do now.

But slowly, through years of inner work, spiritual seeking, and deep self‑inquiry, something shifted.

I began to understand and accept the shadow parts of myself. I held my wounded inner child and finally listened to her. I learned to tell the truth about my shame instead of hiding it. I learned to surrender—to stop orchestrating, manipulating, or gripping life so tightly. I learned to trust something greater than myself. I learned to validate internally instead of externally. I learned that independence isn’t isolation—it’s the freedom to be fully myself.

And somewhere along the way, the intent in my heart and the friendships I fostered created a series of events that brought me to the sea.

The Oregon Coast became my sanctuary, my teacher, my mirror. Its cliffs taught me perspective. Its forests taught me stillness. Its tides taught me surrender. Its sacredness—held for thousands of years by the Indigenous peoples of this region—reminded me that healing is not a destination but a relationship.

Wild Woman Rituals was born from that relationship.

Today, I guide women through the same kind of reconnection that saved me—rituals that honor the body, the land, the ancestors, and the parts of ourselves we’ve abandoned along the way. My background in hospitality, group leadership, and experience‑creation now merges with my spiritual work. Whether I’m leading a guided hike, crafting a personalized ceremony, or holding space in circle, I bring decades of lived experience in creating environments where people feel safe, seen, and transformed.

My story is not one of tragedy—it’s one of reclamation. And if you’re reading this, maybe you’re ready to reclaim something too.

You don’t have to walk that path alone. The land is waiting.

Your inner wisdom is waiting. And I’m here to walk beside you as you find your way back to yourself.