About My Work
I am a mentor, author, and teacher helping others to free themselves to live the lives they are yearning for.
The key to my work is helping clients to raise the level of consciousness from which they experience their lives. Working together, we identify and dismantle dysfunctional patterns like anxiety, disillusionment, fear, and self-doubt that have been preventing them from fully embracing themselves and enthusiastically living their lives.
Clients often exclaim, “This is hard work!” But they are also eager to move forward on their journey saying things like:
“Judith helped me to find myself and turn my life around.”
“My wife dragged me to couples mentoring with Judith. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me and to us.”
“The work I am doing with Judith is changing my life in wonderful ways I couldn’t even imagine before.”
“Judith is warm, friendly and genuinely cares deeply about you.”
“I love working with Judith. It’s like having a whole team of consultants rolled into one person.”
Biography
In my early 30s, I was a mess and didn’t know it. I looked good and was a rising star in corporate strategic planning. But I had also experienced numerous unhealed emotional traumas and was pushing down my distress by overeating, drinking whiskey, and smoking a lot of marijuana. I’d go home many nights, get high, singing and crying to Roberta Flack. At 33, I had also just been through a 4-day state supreme court divorce trial.
A Fortune 100 company recruited me to shift their planning process from number crunching to thoughtful identification of the assumptions and intentions behind the numbers. A year later, after acquiring Tiffany’s, the Chairman of the Board sent me there to deliver a growth plan.
I did a great job but was clueless and emotionally allergic to business politics. I ended up out of a job, banished back to the parent company, and enrolled in an outplacement company to find a new job.
My friend Martha called. She was a fellow alumnus from the first all-women’s MBA program run by Harvard faculty at Simmons College in Boston. She had been relentlessly bugging me to attend an introductory event for a personal growth training. I realized the only way to stop her would be to go so I could tell her I checked it out and was not interested.
When the elevator doors opened, my senses were assaulted by a jammed hallway full of people hugging and looking deeply into each other’s eyes. It was so creepy! I wanted to run but the elevator doors closed before I could escape. Determined to get this over with, I girded my loins and entered the room cloaked in my condescending, know-it-all judgment that these were obviously a bunch of losers with whom I did not want to associate.
Then in a sample exercise from their program, we were divided into two groups. Half of us stood with our eyes closed while the others came and whispered loving messages of encouragement in our ears. I was disarmed by their tenderness and suddenly burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably. I was shocked but somehow knew these people had what I was desperately yearning for. There was something solid, safe, free, and beautifully alive in them.
It was as though the tectonic plates of my being shifted. There was no doubt what was happening inside me was the best thing I had ever experienced. This was IT for me.
That event was my introduction to the teachings of John-Roger, the founder of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.
Little by little, I lost the need to push down my distress. Instead, I spent my time devouring personal growth and spiritual awakening books and trainings while launching my strategic planning consulting practice.
It was hard work identifying and releasing all the ways I had abandoned myself. I had bought into a game of life that kept me racing about, chasing after material success and the approval of others. I did not realize how disconnected I was from my own internal well-being.
Meanwhile, as I helped companies navigate through complex change, executives began asking me to work with them privately. And so, I shifted into executive coaching before that profession even existed.
That evolved into my mentoring practice, working with individuals and couples, and offering group learning programs to assist others in transforming their lives.
My own process of learning to heal what was wounded inside of me and mastering the art of being authentically myself has served as the foundation for my work helping others.
It’s been a fascinating and fulfilling journey over the past four decades so far. Here are some of the highlights of where my path has taken me:
- In 1985, I was ordained as an interfaith minister.
- In 1991, I began officiating weddings.
- In 1997, I became my mother’s primary caregiver for the last nine years of her life.
- I received a doctorate in Social Psychology from the Union Institute in 1998.
- My first book, The Wedding Ceremony Planner, was published in 2005.
- In 2008, I received a doctorate in Spiritual Science from Peace Theological Seminary and College of Philosophy.
- How to Write Meaningful Wedding Vows was published in 2017.
- In 2018, I began serving as a chaplain in my local hospital.
- Making Peace with Death and Dying was published in 2022.
- I’m now writing my 4th book, which is about helping others to transform their lives.
My life fits me now. I live in the beautiful Hudson River Valley of New York. And for the most part my life is a lovely blend of spiritual awakening, self-care, mentoring, writing, teaching, surrounding myself with beautiful flowers, and enjoying friends, including my feline housemates, Tallulah Belle and Zoe Chloe. I also never miss an episode of General Hospital and do jigsaw puzzles on my computer daily!
I am profoundly grateful for the teachings of John-Roger, which have remained my spiritual home for over 40 years.
I am blessed and privileged to have discovered the work that is mine to do in this world. There is nothing like feeling at home within myself and loving the work I do helping other.
My tectonic plates seem to be holding steady, but who knows – maybe more wonderful life-altering changes lie ahead.
