About Me

This is me as Madonna at age 8. Don’t be fooled by the devilish gleam in my eye. Yes, I liked to dress up in my Mom’s slips and belt “Like A Virgin” in the backyard, imagining audiences screaming my name. But outside of that yard, I was the quiet girl in the library buried in Sweet Valley High. I had a severe stutter and spent my days dodging insults. I never stood up for myself or told the bullies or teachers how I felt. Being vulnerable was out of the question, it would’ve been the same as putting a mark on my heart and yelling: “Aim the arrow here!” And my heart was already in tatters.

When I was seven, my mom gifted me a typewriter and an escape into my imagination. I typed 100 page stories about teen girls in Malibu who were secret Russian spies with brawny boyfriends. I wrote the words I couldn’t say, creating characters free to order pepperoni pizza and eagerly read aloud in class. I kept a daily diary, recording my sexual feelings for Christian Slater, but also documenting the days I got teased. My imagination became my most sacred place, my anchor. I found a refuge in Malibu and the gold-lined pages of my diary. Words, once my worst enemy, had saved my little wrecked soul.

I'd always wanted to act, so when I was eleven, I worked up the nerve to audition for "The Wizard of Oz." I landed the leading role of Dorothy and fell in love with performing. I discovered playing another person I didn’t stutter as much, but most importantly, when I did, I was supported and encouraged by my cast-mates. Theater spaces became safe containers where I talked openly about my feelings and was rewarded by making close friends.

 After high school I attended Hollins, a women’s university in Virginia. The women I met at the school didn’t blink when I stuttered. They taught me it was something unique about me, rather than something I should be ashamed of. My creative writing teachers encouraged me to write about my stutter and when I did, I watched as more women opened up to me about the things that shamed them. And our collective shames began to disappear. 

 For my senior thesis project, I wrote and directed a play that took place entirely in a girls’ high school restroom, inspired by the years I’d spent at the school. Surrounded by pink walls and safe in the female-only space, the characters exchanged their deepest secrets and laughed until their sides ached.

By the time I graduated, I knew: there is power in being vulnerable, but the key to being vulnerable is that it must be done in a safe space. 

Now, as a teacher and book coach, my ultimate goal is for a woman to experience being nurtured the way I was over my four years at Hollins, but condensed into a few hours at a workshop or over the weekend at a retreat, or under my weekly care as a book coach. 

Through my intuitive ability in my classes to ask just the right questions and prescribe just the right poem, I inspire my students to feel comfortable writing from their rawest places. 

I want women to feel held when they are with me. I do this through humor, and a willingness to be imperfect. This approach allows women to create their writings from a pure, honest place where they free themselves from judgment and their own critical eye. 

 Under my guidance and supported in a safe container, a woman sheds her shame. 

 She builds community.

 She finds her voice.