My Story

 

 

For fifteen years I lived in the heart of the Silicon Valley. I never fit in. I  watched people's eyes glaze over at parties as I tried to tell them my elevator pitch -- multiple degrees in English and Creative Writing, but no book to brag about, no teaching job at a prestigious college. I had learned from my parents that your life should sound impressive. But why should anyone get excited about my story when I wasn't even excited about the life I was living? At age five, I told my parents I wanted to be an artist. "You can't be an artist," they told me. To them, being an artist was for dropouts and hippies. I put the dream to bed and set off, scattered and confused, trying to make the kind of life that would make them proud of me.

In 2010 I bought my first goat as an adverse reaction to finishing one too many years of graduate school. I wanted to get out of my intellect and bring more "real" life into my house and my heart, and to reconnect with the creative energy that used to be so much a part of who I was. I bought more goats, then taught myself how to make cheese and soap from their milk and Faerie Goatmother was born. It was a start, but not a passion.

In 2015, I took the biggest leap of faith of my life and moved my family and our goats to 5 acres of deep redwood forest. Our life is harder here, but it is also richer than you could imagine. There is so much healing to be done beneath the protection of the redwoods.

On my birthday in January of 2022 I picked up an iPad for the first time, opened Photoshop for the first time and took the second biggest leap of faith of my life: creating my first digital composite as a means of healing that 5 year-old little girl who never got her dream. Many of the pieces focus on themes of psychological and emotional healing. My training as a poet allows me to see the world in symbols and metaphor. For the first time in my life, who I am on the inside matches what I am doing on the outside. I hope these images bring you the same joy I feel when creating and sharing them!