•   I received my Life Coach certification from the nationally-accredited, highly acclaimed Southwest  

      Institute of Healing Arts.

•   My earlier careers in banking, real estate, and engineering include working at a Bechtel

     Corporation overseas site with people of 31 nationalities. As Supervisor of the Expatriate

     Personnel Department, I helped people adapt to their new environment and prepared an

     orientation manual which explained culture and reverse-culture shock.

•   Most recently I was Director of International Programs for Phoenix Country Day School,

      a prestigious college-preparatory school, where I mentored exchange students, teachers,

      and host families in life and in overcoming cultural challenges.

•   One of my most rewarding experiences was mentoring a girl from age seven through eighteen

      and beyond through Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Arizona and seeing the positive impact on her

      life. I also co-facilitated the training of new mentors.

•   I am a member of the the Association for Research and Enlightenment and the Arizona

      Enneagram Association, and a volunteer for Hospice of the Valley.

•   I also served as a board member of the Arizona Enneagram Association, a non-profit organization 

     dedicated to teaching about  the nine distinct personality types. The Enneagram system is a powerful

     tool for growth that enables people to understand their perceptions and motivations as well as the

     viewpoints of others. (See Personality Types)

“Let it go! Just let it go!” was the challenge that consumed my mind, controlled my emotions,

and wreaked havoc in my body. It impacted every area of my life and robbed me of my joy. I had

spent twenty years pursuing  a steadily progressing self-help and spiritual path until I finally learned how to master it.

I was born to two deaf parents and a hearing brother long before there were computers, closed-captioning, and Child Protective Services. It was also a time when Jewish people disowned their children for marrying out of their faith.

My father was born in 1905 to a wealthy Jewish family in Philadelphia, while my mother, born in 1913, came from a poor Catholic family of coal miners in upstate Pennsylvania. Both were isolated from their families, who had little tolerance for their deafness, and were sent to a boarding school for the deaf in Philadelphia. Years later when they married, my father was disowned by his family and left penniless.

Life was especially harsh for deaf people during those times. This added blow caused pain and upheaval and led to my parents’ separation when I was five and my brother was seven-and-a-half. Trying to be helpful, my father’s brothers pulled us out of our home (today called kidnapping), and placed us into separate foster homes. My uncles had been put into a nearly impossible situation and did the best they could. Unknown to them, we both were physically and emotionally abused for six months until we revealed the abuse. They immediately found good homes for us as soon as they learned about it.

We spent the next twelve months in our second foster homes, and I was so shut down, I could barely communicate. During the  entire separation, our father worked two jobs to support us while our mother walked door-to-door with our photos searching for us until she arrived at my foster home while I was at school. I knew nothing about her visit until one night when the doorbell rang. When I looked up,I saw my mother rush toward me with outstretched arms and a doll in her hand. I still cry at the poignant memory of seeing her walk through the door.

After those eighteen long months, our parents reunited but remained disconnected, and we were estranged from our father's family. Our lives were in turmoil until my late teens when our parents finally and truly became life companions. The foster home experience permeated my world for the next five decades.I tried to appear strong and confident but constantly battled fears of abandonment and rejection and feelings of worthlessness. My fears and insecurities pervaded every area of my life.

Where it persistently showed up was in my relationships with the people I cared about most. My husband and I loved each other very much, but divorced after eighteen years because we each brought the same unresolved emotional baggage into our marriage. What followed was ten years of unsuccessful romantic relationships that ended painfully.  I finally understood that I could never have a healthy, loving relationship until I changed how I viewed my world.

Drawing on all of my resources, a process emerged from which I would understand the people and events in my life in a new light. It was literally transforming. I felt a cloud lift from my psyche and with it the heaviness of years of guilt, blame, and shame. For the first time in my life, I valued myself. Once I experienced sustained harmony and joy instead of fleeting moments, I committed to helping others to be empowered in how to Let it Go!

It doesn’t need to take a lifetime!