What is it really like being you?
If you are like many of the people who come to work with me, you may describe yourself as appearing capable, accomplished, and functional on the outside, while inside you feel unsettled, disconnected, or quietly unhappy. You may sense that something essential is missing, even if you cannot yet put words to it. You may be tired of trying so hard, tired of being disappointed, or tired of feeling like you are living a life that does not quite belong to you.
I have spent more than forty years listening deeply to people as they try to make sense of their lives, their relationships, and their inner worlds. I have also walked this terrain myself. That combination shapes the way I work and the way I understand meaningful change.
When life looks fine on the outside but feels off on the inside
Most of my clients are thoughtful, intelligent, capable people. They are not broken and they are not weak. Yet many feel out of sync with themselves or with the lives they have built. Some struggle with anger, sadness, anxiety, or emotional numbness. Others feel disconnected in their relationships or unsure of who they really are beneath long-standing roles and expectations.
When I ask new clients what it is like being them, I often hear things like:
- I always feel like an outsider.
- I never feel good enough. I never seem to get anything right.
- I carry a heaviness that feels suffocating.
- I am never really happy. I am always disappointed or afraid.
- I do not feel deeply connected to anyone. It feels safer to stay guarded.
Many arrive skeptical. They have read the books, tried therapy, and worked hard to improve themselves without experiencing lasting change. It is understandable when they wonder what could possibly be different here.
A different place to begin
What I offer is not a quick fix or a set of techniques aimed at managing symptoms. I help people shift the very place from which they are living their lives. Instead of relating to themselves and the world primarily through old fears, unconscious beliefs, and protective patterns, they learn to connect more deeply within themselves and to participate in their lives from a steadier, more authentic place.
Over time, people begin to see that transformation is not about becoming someone new. It is about remembering who they are beneath the stories and emotional habits they developed along the way. As awareness grows, self-compassion naturally follows. Many realize they have been meeting life the best way they knew how and are now able to learn to do it differently.
This work is experiential rather than theoretical. It is not about fixing yourself or striving to be better. It is about learning to see with new eyes, to feel what has long been avoided, and to clear out patterns of perception that quietly shape how you interpret and respond to your life.
If you would like to spend some time with these ideas, I’ve written a short, free guide called The Real Secret to True Happiness.
It offers a simple inward orientation and a way to begin noticing how the quality of your consciousness shapes your experience of life.
You are welcome to explore it quietly, in your own time.
How this work took shape
I first came to understand this way of working through living and transforming my own life. Once I became aware of the possibility of changing my life from the inside out, I set about unraveling and reorienting my fundamental perceptions about who I was and what was a true expression of me in this world.
My clients have also been wonderful teachers. I have spent decades of being present with them and facilitating their process of revealing and claiming a deeper sense of self to serve as the new foundation for evolving their lives. Over time, my mentoring approach took shape into what I now call the Consciousness Ecology Method™, a way of tending to our inner lives with presence and stewardship.
The Consciousness Ecology Method™
The Consciousness Ecology Method™ is the art and practice of understanding and tending to our inner environment. Just as an ecosystem depends on balance, so too does your state of mind and heart. So, look inward and examine the beliefs, stories, habits, and emotional patterns that silently shape how you see the world and navigate your life. Look at what you give your attention to, what you avoid, and how you relate to your experiences.
Rather than focusing on fixing problems, the Consciousness Ecology Method™ is the practice of shifting the quality of consciousness from which you meet your life. Over time, this creates the conditions for meaningful and lasting change through greater presence, honesty, and compassion. It is something you come to know through the process itself.
Here’s how people work with me:
3 Mentoring Programs
One-on-One
A deeply personal exploration to create lasting change
Couples
Belonging without self-abandonment. Intimacy without erasure.
End-of-Life
A helping hand through caregiving, grief, and end-of-life decisions
An invitation to talk about mentoring
If you find yourself recognizing parts of your own experience here, you are welcome to
schedule a free thirty-minute conversation with me. It is simply a chance to talk about where you are, what feels out of sync, and whether this work might be supportive for you.
To understand why this work matters so deeply to me, it helps to know a bit about how I came to it.
My Story
For much of my early adult life, I looked successful from the outside. I had a high-profile corporate career and all the visible markers of accomplishment. Inside, however, I felt like a restless traveler who could never quite arrive. No matter what I achieved or where I went, there was a persistent sense of unease, as if I were always trying to get somewhere other than where I was.
At the time, I did not have language for what I was missing. I only knew that the life I was living did not feel like a true reflection of who I was. I chased the usual promises of fulfillment. Achievement. Relationships. New experiences. Each offered a brief sense of satisfaction, but none brought the lasting sense of wholeness I was seeking.
When life felt overwhelming, I did what many of us do. I pushed my feelings down and kept going. I did not yet know how to be present with my inner life or how to listen to what my discomfort was trying to teach me.
When everything I relied on fell away
Everything changed when the tectonic plates of my life shifted in a way I never saw coming.
I had just won a four-day State Supreme Court divorce trial, which would shake anyone to their core. Before I had time to settle, the chairman of the board called. Our company had recently acquired Tiffany’s, and I was being sent on assignment to deliver a growth plan.
Then my neat little world imploded.
I did an excellent job but was utterly unskilled in corporate politics. Before long, I was out of a job, sent back to the parent company, and enrolled in an outplacement program to figure out what came next. My identity, which had been so tightly woven around my work and marriage, had nothing left to cling to.
That is when my friend Martha called. Again.
The moment my life turned inside out
We had been part of the first all-women’s MBA program taught by Harvard faculty at Simmons College in Boston. For months, Martha had tried to get me to attend an introductory evening for a personal growth training called Insight Seminars.
“You have to come,” she insisted. “You will love it.”
I was certain I would not.
Finally, to get her to stop asking, I agreed. My plan was simple. Show up, observe, decide it was not for me, and then report back that I had done my due diligence.
I still remember the moment the elevator doors opened.
The hallway was crowded with people hugging and gazing into one another’s eyes. It felt intensely uncomfortable. My first instinct was to run, but the elevator doors had already closed behind me.
Cloaked in my polished, condescending, know-it-all persona, I walked into the room convinced I was surrounded by people I would never choose to know.
Then came the exercise that changed my life.
We were divided into two groups. Half of us stood with our eyes closed while the others moved quietly around the room. One by one, a stranger stepped beside me, leaned in close, gently moved my hair aside, and whispered a message of loving encouragement into my ear.
Their tenderness disarmed me. I burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably.
In that moment, something came alive in me.
I knew this was it for me.
Learning to live from the inside out
That evening introduced me to the teachings of John-Roger, founder of Insight Seminars and the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. It marked the beginning of turning my life inside out.
Until then, I had been living as a bundle of reactions. When something good happened, I chased more of it. When something painful arose, I tried to escape. For the first time, my attention shifted from what was happening outside of me to what was happening inside of me.
I began to see how often I had abandoned myself in the pursuit of approval and achievement. Instead of ricocheting from one external stimulation to another, I started learning how to be responsive to how things were going inside of me.
I began examining the beliefs and fears that had been shaping my choices and running my life. It was a new experience to actually feel my feelings instead of numbing them, and to attend to my own emotional needs with honesty and self-compassion.
One day, while sharing a realization with a friend, I extended both arms straight out in front of me with my palms raised like two stop signs. That had been my unconscious strategy for living. If I could keep everyone and everything at arm’s length, perhaps I would be safe. I did not trust my ability to meet life, so I kept life from touching me.
No wonder I had carpal tunnel in both wrists and bone spurs in my shoulders. My body had literally been holding this posture of defense.
I began working directly with my body to shift this pattern. Gently, day after day, I rotated my shoulders, lifted them up and back, and allowed my heart to move forward. It became a physical prayer.
I am willing to lead with my heart.
I am willing to trust myself.
I am willing to let life in.
As my shoulders softened, something inside me softened too. I began to understand that my attempts to control life had only created tension and separation. As I surrendered that illusion of control, I discovered a deeper trust in myself and in the quiet intelligence that moves through all of life.
When my healing became my work
Out of my own healing came my work with others.
After leaving corporate America, I helped companies navigate complex change. Executives began asking to work with me privately, and I moved into executive coaching before that field even had a name. Over time, my work evolved into the mentoring approach I now call the Consciousness Ecology Method™.
The ecological health and evolution of my consciousness is now central to how I live my life. I am amazed at all the new perceptions and understandings I continue to discover as I elevate my consciousness. My ongoing discoveries of who I truly am have resulted in many significant milestones that I never could have imagined before I came to this path of deeper self-awareness. Here are some of the highlights:
- becoming an interfaith minister
- living with and caring for my mother through the last nine years of her life
- earning doctorates in Social Psychology and Spiritual Science
- serving as a hospital chaplain
- publishing four books
All of those matter to me. Yet what I treasure most is the transformation of my inner environment. The restless hunger that once drove me is gone. There is peace inside me now and I no longer yearn to be anyone other than who I am.
I feel blessed that I get to help others through my writing and mentoring and that I have found a path of spiritual awakening that richly nourishes my soul.
My journey did not turn me into someone new. It allowed me to finally be at home in my own skin. This involved two fundamental shifts in my orientation to life. Instead of living in reaction to people and events, I learned to stay balanced inside myself while navigating the outer world. And, like discovering technicolor after living in black and white, I moved into the living experience of being a soul on a human journey.
I live in the Hudson River Valley of New York. My life is a simple blend of the sacred and the ordinary. My days flow through spiritual devotion, mentoring, writing, teaching, walking, indoor gardening, being with friends, and meeting my challenges with a softened heart. I now know where home is inside myself and how to return to it when I lose my way.
If any part of my story resonates with you, and if you feel restlessness or the sense that life has more depth than you are living, I would be honored to help you on your way. Together, we can explore what is stirring or feels out of sync, untangle old patterns, and help you create a life that fits you from the inside out.
If you feel called to explore this work, you are welcome to schedule a free thirty-minute conversation.
