Author | Book Coach | Spiritual Director

I’m an author, book coach, and spiritual director who tends to both story and soul.

I’ve been creating with words since elementary school, when I wrote stories about roller skating dragons, bewitched kites, and vegetables demanding equal rights. Over the years I’ve filled countless journals with thoughts, emotions, life lessons, and the details of both ordinary and extraordinary days.

Now I write primarily personal essay and memoir.

My first book, Toward the Light: A Year in Paris (September 2026) recounts my first fragile steps toward healing after being sexually assaulted by a stranger in Paris.

Following the Thread

Years ago, my pastor handed out pieces of red yarn and William Stafford’s poem The Way It Is. Since then, I’ve kept both on my nightstand.

The 

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

….

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

The poem and red yarn remind me of the thread I’ve been following for years.

In my twenties, influenced by my experience of being sexually assaulted while living in France, I graduated from law school with dreams of working for a non-governmental organization to uplift women around the world. That specific dream never materialized, but the heart of it—my desire to help women and girls find their voices and share their stories—became a thread I would continue to follow.

While practicing law, I volunteered with a program helping girls living in the stresses of poverty find their voices and follow their dreams. As a life coach for a teen on the verge of dropping out of high school, I acted as tutor, cheerleader, and mentor. Today she holds two master’s degrees and inspires her second-grade students.

After a nearly twenty-year career as a government attorney, I resigned and spent a month on a spiritual pilgrimage, walking the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain. 

A year later, I returned to graduate school and eventually earned a Master of Theological Studies with a concentration in social justice and ethics. My master’s thesis focused on spiritual care for survivors of sexual violence. After seminary, I trained as a spiritual director.

As a spiritual director, I work with female survivors of trauma who are not in crisis but sense another layer of healing is waiting, and with women navigating transition—a career shift, an empty nest, a loss, a turning point. I create a safe and supportive space for women to explore their spiritual journeys and uncover their inner wisdom. 

In 2025, the thread led me somewhere new: book coaching. I wrote my memoir with the steady presence of a coach who offered encouragement, accountability, and compassion. My coach helped me sort through the bigger picture of my story and shape it into a book. The experience taught me what women need when they’re trying to tell hard stories.

As a book coach, I work with women ready to write their stories of transformation, spiritual growth, and resilience but unsure where to begin. Just as my coach offered me, I now offer a compassionate presence, accountability and encouragement, and a safe space for hard truths.

A poem and piece of red yarn helped me name what has been here all along: a thread weaving together law, seminary, writing, and mentoring into a single path. What once felt like a chaotic career path has revealed itself as a deep desire to uplift women and girls by honoring their stories and creating space for their voices to be heard.

I never let go of the thread.

If you’ve found your way to this page, perhaps you’re following a thread of your own. I’d love to hear where it’s leading you.

A Little More About Me

My spouse and I live in Central Iowa. I nurture my love of singing in the soprano section of a community choir. I mentor young writers through my work with WriteGirl, a creative writing and mentoring organization for teen girls and gender-expansive youth. My favorite job title is “professional auntie” to a dozen nieces and nephews. After catching the travel bug as a young adult, I’ve experienced the landscape and culture of several European countries and India.

A Few of My Favorite Things

I enjoy movies (romantic comedies or compelling dramas—skip the gore and action), TV (lots of British period dramas and mysteries, with some comedy mixed in), attending live theater (especially musicals), hiking in the mountains (especially in Montana), or sitting by the ocean and reading a good book.

Memoirs I love (in no particular order):

• • Wild by Cheryl Strayed
  • Appetites by Caroline Knapp
  • Wintering by Katherine May
  • Slip by Mallary Tenore Tarpley
  • The Desert Pilgrim by Mary Swander
  • Hunger by Roxane Gay
  • The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd
  • Acedia & me by Kathleen Norris
  • The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong
  • Dog Medicine by Julie Barton
  • Everything Happens for a Reason by Kate Bowler
  • Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad

A few of my favorite fiction writers: 

• • Judy Blume (whose books got me through adolescence)
  • Barbara Kingsolver
  • Sue Monk Kidd
  • Bonnie Garmus
  • Marie Benedict
  • Delia Owens
  • Kristin Hannah