Some Things You Might Want to Know About Me
Naturally questions about my training and experience, and all that, come up for people that want to take the Magic and Meaning of Herbs training. So I thought for those of you who are interested about what I have done in the past I would just outline a bit more for you here.
If you like, you can read more about my philosophy here.
In 1986, I started my herbal training with Susun Weed and trained with her as her first live-out apprentice for three years. When I completed my training with Susun, she asked me to take up the evolution and development of her Six Steps of Healing Model. Throughout my entire healing practices I have used this model as a basic guideline and have evolved in into my own Web of Healing.
In 1987 I started my own herbal company Evenstar Herbs and began doing Wellness and Herbal programs and teaching herbal classes including a Family Practitioner Series training people to use herbs for their own and their family’s well-being.
Although the form and structure has changed over time I still maintain a private practice doing Wellness programs. Over the years I have done more than 10,000 Wellness and Herbal programs.
At the same time I was training with Susun, I also began my own private practice as a traditional lay midwife doing home births in my then home state of New Jersey for about 10 years. For some years before opening my midwifery practice I was a Lactation Consultant,La Leche Leader, Labor Support Doula, and I taught Childbirth Education classes.
In my current private practice, I am a Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner certified through the American Association of Drugless Practitioners. In addition to my herbal work, I work as a Certified Licensed Nutritionist focusing on Functional Health Nutritional Medicine and Functional Health Testing. Although I do some in-person consultations, I work mostly with clients nationally and internationally by phone and email.
I am also a Level II Verified Biochemical Profile Clinician with the Robertson Research Institute and specialize in herbal, nutritional, lifestyle, and personal development programs for Mood and Energy imbalances such as depression and anxiety.
In addition, I have a private practice as a Personal Life Coach having gone through CoachU’s three year life coaching program and Simply Effective Coaching training. I am a licensed trainer in the following Personal Life Coaching Programs:
- Personal Freedoms Licensed Trainer
- Extreme Self Care Licensed Trainer,
- Toleration Free Program Licensed Trainer
- Personal Evolution Program Licensed Trainer
- A Perfect Life Program Licensed Trainer
- Personal Foundation Program Licensed Trainer
- Attraction Program Licensed Trainer
Back in 1987 I began a 12 year apprenticeship with a Cherokee mystic. Unlike a Western apprenticeship this was a traditional apprenticeship. The purpose of the apprenticeship was to clear away all blocks to my conscious experience of myself as a multi-dimensional being. It was during the intensity of this apprenticeship that I recognized the balance required to blend Direct Revelation and Self Initiation with Focused Mastery Direction.
Around the same time that I was doing my apprenticeship, I was also training with Twylah Nitsch the Clan Grandmother of the Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge. She taught me how to do the Seneca Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge Medicine Wheel Earth Energy Charts. She initiated me into the Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge and gave me My Seneca medicine (spiritual) name Genyoi or Blue Jay. When I completed my training with Grandmother Twylah she asked me to develop the relationship between the Seneca Medicine Wheel and the herbs. I later became a StoneKeeper of the Wolf Clan Lodge.
After I moved to Virginia I opened the Evenstar School of Botanical Wisdom as a professional herbalism training. But I soon broke with my teacher and knew I needed to stop teaching and change the focus of my work. I also knew it was time for me to withdraw and close down the Medicine Wheel garden (which my teacher and I had opened a few years previous)- letting it go fallow.
After my teacher and I broke with each other in 1999 I spent the next 9 years consolidating my own energetic dynamics.
Now as Evenstar and I both stand at the gateway of our transformation into True Adulthood and initiation into Elderhood we have given birth through Direct Revelation to The Earth Path School of Nature Centered Healing and Spiritual Practice.
I have just begun a Ph.D program in Organic Psychology/Applied Ecological Psychology, focusing on regenerative ecopsychology work that helps people live and think in balance with Nature’s natural systems.
I am also currently a member of the Sisterhood of Avalon and have entered a 3-4 year Avalonian Seminary theological training to become an Avalonian Pastoral Counselor.
As far as my training goes here is a list:
MA in Psychology and Counseling (focusing on Positive Psychology) with a concentration in Organizational Development, Goddard College
MA in Human Development with a concentration in Early Childhood Education, Psychology and Development, University of Chicago
BA in Psychology, Bucknell University
Professional Certification Program in Nutritional Science - Certified Licensed Nutritionist
Robertson Research Institute Level II Verified Biochemical Profile Clinician
Coach U Training Program - Professional Life Coach
Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner
Munay-Ki 9 Rites of the Earthkeeper Initiations
Practitioner and Educator - Educational Kinesiology movement education for learning disabilities and cognitive restructuring
Certified Reflexologist
Practitioner and Educator Touch for Health - kinesiology testing for muscle reconditioning
Certified Practitioner Ritual Training counselor
Certified Shamanic Counselor
Certified Energy Dynamics counselor
Certified Practitioner Matrimatics Birth Professional
Certified Practitioner Matrimatics Herbalism
Certified Practitioner and Teacher Sandlin Technique Bodywork
Byronomics Energy Management and Diagnosis
Labor Support Doula
Husband Coached Childbirth Bradly Method Certified Childbirth Educator
International Childbirth Education Association (ICEA) Certified Childbirth Educator
Pregnancy and Postpartum Fitness Certified Childbirth Educator
Informed Homebirth Certified Childbirth Educator
LaLeche Leader and District Advisor
International Board Certified Lactation Consultant
Over the years various psychics, sensitives, teachers, astrologers, and more have given me multitude of labels including- intuitive, medium, healer, star-being, Medicine Woman, etc. Brain wave studies have shown that my brain waves naturally operate in theta during my waking stages. Apparently this gives me easy access to my unconscious and my multi-dimensional nature.
In any case, I have lived my life always aware of multiple dimensions occurring simultaneously and have come to recognize that it is our natural state as human beings.
I live in Virginia with my husband of 41 years, our five grown children living nearby with their spouses and partners, soon-to-be nine grandchildren, our dogs and cats, their dogs and cats, and many, many plants.
Hope that helps give you some sense of my background.
