About My Work

What I do and who I serve

After forty years of mentoring thoughtful, accomplished people who quietly believe something is wrong with them, I can tell you this: there isn’t. They just needed to learn a different way of experiencing their lives. I was my first client. For years, I was one of these people whose life looked fine on the outside, while something was always missing or off in how I felt inside. Here are some of the ways clients have described their inner restlessness while trying to make sense of their lives, their relationships, and their inner worlds:

I never feel good enough, and I don’t seem to get anything right.
I carry a heaviness that feels suffocating.
I am never really happy. I am always disappointed or afraid.
I don’t feel deeply connected to anyone. It feels safer to stay guarded.
I’m tired of trying so hard and feeling like I am living a life that does not quite belong to me.

In one way or another, they all describe feeling out of sync with themselves or their lives. Some struggle with anger, sadness, anxiety, or emotional numbness. Others describe being unsure of who they really are beneath long-standing roles and expectations. If any of that sounds familiar, I want you to know something: the feeling is real, and it is pointing at something true. But what it is pointing at is not a flaw in you. It is pointing at the place from which you have been meeting your life. That is where this work begins.

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.

This is not about becoming someone new. It is about remembering who you are beneath the stories and emotional habits you have developed along the way.

Most of us have tried hard to feel better. We have worked on ourselves, sought understanding, pushed through. And yet something persists. The same patterns return. The same feelings circle back.

That is not a failure of effort. It is a sign that the work needs to happen at a deeper level than effort can reach.

What most of us have not yet looked at is the filter through which every experience passes before we consciously register it. Consider a simple moment:

You are out to lunch with friends celebrating your birthday. You open their gifts and none of them are anything you would ever want. Something inside tightens. Irritation rises, then a quiet story begins to form: These are all generic gifts. These are my friends. Don’t they even know me?

None of those thoughts are facts. They are interpretations, arising instantly from beliefs and emotional habits that have been operating below the surface, probably for years.

This is how the filter works. Our beliefs, expectations, and emotional habits quietly shape what we perceive and how we feel about it, often in the space of a single moment.

We think we are responding to what is actually happening. Most of the time we are responding to what that event means inside the particular atmosphere of our own minds. Most of us have never been shown how to see that filter, let alone tend to it. That is precisely what this work addresses.

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 work I do with individuals and couples is grounded in what I call Consciousness Ecology™ – the art and practice of understanding and tending to our inner environment.

At its essence, the Consciousness Ecology Method™ is about tending to the inner environment in which your life is unfolding.

Most of us move through the world without realizing how much our experience is being shaped by old conditioning, emotional residue, and deeply held assumptions about ourselves and others. These patterns become the invisible atmosphere of our lives. They influence how we perceive, how we feel, and how we respond, often without our awareness.

This work invites a different kind of attention.

Rather than trying to change outer circumstances or manage reactions on the surface, we begin to gently observe and care for what is happening within. We notice the patterns that no longer serve, the beliefs that limit what feels possible, and the emotional habits that keep us looping in familiar ways. And, over time, we learn how to release what is not true and realign with a deeper, more stable presence within ourselves.

This is a quiet, ongoing process. As your inner environment becomes clearer and more coherent, your experience of life begins to change in natural and often surprising ways. You may find yourself responding rather than reacting, feeling more at ease in situations that once triggered you, and relating to yourself and others with greater clarity and compassion.

Nothing is forced. Nothing is imposed. Instead, something essential begins to emerge from within you, something that has been there all along, simply waiting for the space to be seen and lived.

Learn more about the Consciousness Ecology Method™

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 right for you.

My Story

The life that looked fine from the outside

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.

I did not yet have language for what 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 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, the kind of ordeal that 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.

I did an excellent job. But I was completely unskilled in corporate politics. Before long, I was out of a job and enrolled in an outplacement program, trying to figure out what came next. My identity, which had been so tightly woven around my work and my marriage, had nothing left to cling to.

That is when my friend Martha called. Again.

The moment my life turned inside out

Martha and I had been part of the first all-women’s MBA program taught by Harvard faculty at Simmons College in Boston. For months, she had been trying 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 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 completely. I burst into tears and sobbed.

In that moment, something came alive in me.

I knew, with a certainty I had never felt before, that 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 my own inner life.

I began examining the beliefs and fears that had been shaping my choices. 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, 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 had even found its name. Over time, that work evolved into what I now call the Consciousness Ecology Method™.

The path that began that night in the elevator hallway has taken me places I never could have imagined: becoming an interfaith minister, earning doctorates in Social Psychology and Spiritual Science, serving as a hospital chaplain, living with and caring for my mother through the last nine years of her life, and publishing four books.

Each of those matters deeply to me. And 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.

My journey did not turn me into someone new. It allowed me to finally be at home in my own skin, through two fundamental shifts in how I meet 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 something I can only describe as being a soul on a human journey.

I live in the Hudson River Valley of New York. My days are a simple blend of the sacred and the ordinary: spiritual devotion, mentoring, writing, teaching, walking, indoor gardening, and meeting my challenges with a softened heart. I know where home is inside myself now, and I know 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.