About

Some Things About Me

  • I’m interested in a wide variety of topics. I love going deep into a subject but even more, I love exploring the connections and spaces between different subjects — how disciplines come together and influence each other. I identify as a “scanner” personality type. Sometimes known as a multi-passionate, multi-potentialite or polymath type.
  • I believe that nature, including human nature, is brilliant and we can trust in the amazing processes of nature to guide us to balance. When we are separated or cut off from nature, we suffer. This separation is the cause of so many of the problems that we face. 
  • I want to create a world that is based on “power with/to/within rather than power over.” For more on this idea, check out Brene Brown’s work.

Topics I’m Particularly Interested In

Space, “Home”, and Design and the Way it Influences Our Lives

I am fascinated with the intersection between the built environment and how we live. How we can live our values through creating spaces that respect the people who occupy them while also sustaining the earth.

Spaces can create life. I’m fascinated with the patterns and principles we can use to facilitate this, primarily patterns and principles found in nature.

Space do not need to be large but they do need to function well. I’ve found that if we can use our emotions to figure out how things are working or not, we can over time A typical path is to buy more to solve these problems which then necessitates more space to store these things and ends up being a spiraling problem of more stuff and more space.

Many spaces are built in a way that cuts us off from nature. I am interested in how we can change this to be reconnected with nature. Some approaches include permaculture methodology, biophilic design, Living Building Challenge, etc.

In order to understand how spaces affect us, we need to understand us and that is another one of my fascinations: human nature. Why we are the way we are and how we make meaning of it all. Also how we came to be the way we are including the experiences that shape our understanding.

Human Development

I’ve long been fascinated with psychology and that interest expanded greatly when my son was born four years ago. I feel fortunate to have come across the RIE approach to working with young children and it struck a nerve. It gave words to so many of the things that I had noticed about how we treat humans and gave me confidence to approach parenting in a way that felt authentic to me.

I’ve been interested in educational theory for a long time but it’s taken on new meaning now that I have a child and I’m faced with decisions about how my husband and I choose to parent and how he will “become educated.” I’m fascinated with the unschooling/deschooling approaches and love the work of thinkers like John Holt, Alfie Kohn, and Peter Gray.

I’m very passionate about moving beyond behaviorism in how we treat children. Children do NOT need to be told how to behave in ways that make us happy. They do not need to be “rewarded” or “punished” for doing things that please us. All humans, including the very youngest among us, deserve respect. We are not raising children. We are raising humans.

Financial Independence, Resource Management

Becoming aware of how we allocate resources has really helped me to be able to live more as I desired. For example, while the typical trajectory among the people I know was to get the bigger house once kids arrived, my husband I made the choice to stay in our small condo in the city so that we could afford to have me stay home with our son. Many of our family members and friends think we’re crazy living as we do but it has been one of the best decisions in terms of enabling us to afford things that are more important to us.

Sustainability

A central theme that ties everything together is always sustainability — our impact on the planet and on future generations.

For more information on what I’m focused on now, check out my now page.

A Bit About My Background

I’ve held many roles including wine buyer/educator, instructor and therapist for treating pain using Thai massage and yoga informed by trigger point therapy, curriculum developer, marketing director, and photographer.

I studied Art History at the University of Illinois in Chicago where I focused on the History of Architecture and Photography with a special interest in Semiotics, the study of signs and how meaning is created. I originally thought that I would go on to get my Masters in Architecture, but life had other plans.

I’ve been a student of photography for many years and have also spent some of them doing professional photography. You can check out some of my photos here.

Topics that are very important to me include our interaction with our environment, healthy materials, green architecture, local food, human development, alternative approaches to addressing pain, and zero waste living.