MY BACKGROUND

After many years of working in higher education administration, at the age of 49 I went back to school and earned a master's degree in social work. I started a psychotherapy practice and then a life coaching practice. My work has always had a strong emphasis on helping people articulate what they want most in their lives, develop new ways to deal with problems and obstacles, and create more authentic lives for themselves.

I have a special interest in the mysteries of authentic living because this was not something ever addressed specifically in either my formal or informal education. From the moment we enter the world, we are bombarded with messages about how to behave, usually in the form of prohibitions, rules, and expectations from others. These are not bad things, but many people internalize them in a way that causes them to pay more attention to fitting in and pleasing others, than to listening to themselves. Over time, they become experts at ignoring thoughts or desires they may have that don’t fit the life program they’ve mapped out for themselves, or that others have mapped out for them. The result is that many people go through life on "automatic pilot" rather than greeting each new day as an exciting opportunity to create and appreciate the full experience of living their own unique lives.

Some of the goals I have helped clients reach are:

• completion of a tenure materials package despite lack of encouragement and support from her department chairman
• improved strategies for working cooperatively with her spouse on financial planning
• limit-setting with family and friends who make too many demands
• a new approach for inviting and getting cooperation from a teen-age daughter
• improved focus on her physical and financial health as her top priorities
• and successful strategies for dealing with siblings in making decisions involving their aging parents.