Good to meet you! Educator, advocate, facilitator giving voice to what is unseen, unspoken, and longing to be included.

The maxim ‘we belong to each other’ is at the heart of my life’s work. I am an animist with a mystic heart, a former catholic nun, and a current lover of the entire web of life. A mysticism which meets advocacy, ancestral healing, divining, spiritual accompaniment, and holding space for transformative conversations is how I live my days. I aspire to a way of being in the world that orients towards equity and justice — on micro and macro levels — with all that I am and do. Rhythms of actionable, prayerful solidarity, classical philosophical inquiry, and 20+ years of metabolizing catholic teaching at considerable depth are the foundations of my life’s work. Since 1999, I’ve sojourned with thousands of people in their thirst for wholeness, wonder, and positive social change through circle discussions, personal sessions, retreats, immersive service experiences, advocacy, and civic engagement throughout North America and parts of Europe. These experiences continue to reveal to me the inextricable link between personal and cultural healing. Relating with one’s beloved ancestors in ordinary and transformative ways, cultivating a sense of wonder and civic agency, and deepening in a spiritual practice which connects one to the entire Web of Life can be real anchors in these times.

I am immersed in catholic mystic tradition, sufism, elemental dagara wisdom, and scholar-activism. In my years as a catholic nun, I lived in Italy with 54 other nuns from 16 different cultures, learned Spanish and Italian, and had the honor of being of divine service with every breath. After leaving religious life, I obtained a Master’s Degree in Liberal Studies, continuing to embody a contemplative-active life. My Master’s Thesis — Education as a Site for Ethical Transformation and Activism — informed and inspired my approach in the following years as an educator and community organizer in three different schools, K-12. I implemented culturally relevant programs and immersive inquiry rooted in themes of ethics, kinship, democracy, and justice. My ongoing work focuses on remembering from whence we came and teaching in an organic multi-religious manner through an intersectional lens for the overall wholeness/holiness of all beings, (omnia sancta).

My ancestors of bone hail from Lithuanian, Irish, and Slavic lands, and ultimately conspired to bring our family to the nourishing lands of Chicago, Illinois and Overland Park, Kansas, where I spent my childhood and adolescence. I live between Brooklyn, New York — traditional homelands of the Lenape — and the west coast of Ireland. Among my many hopes and dreams for this work, I long to illuminate the complementarity between ancestral connection and catholic mystic wisdom while also holding a multi-religious lens. I am also committed to showing up in a prayerful and tender way toward relationally healing the hurt which the institutional Church has inflicted upon many a heart. Mercy. The cloud of witnesses who have emboldened me for decades, namely, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Padre Pio, Thomas Aquinas, now also include Mary Anne Buckley, Emma Bielski, and Stanley Sudeikis, Sr. just to name a few. All you holy ones, ora pro nobis.

It feels important to name and honor whose shoulders, prayers, and loving devotion I stand upon; Ruth, the Moabite, who cried out, ‘your people are my people, where you go, I will go, where you lie, I will lie’ (Ruth 1: 16-17). Saint Teresa of Avila and Mother Agnes, through whom I encountered the vast ocean of the Carmelites. Shaykha Fariha, whose embodied multi-religious Sufism continues to deepen my understanding of love and reverence. Mother Pacis, a tender, wide-hearted Mother Superior (from my days in Religious Life), whose lived teaching of fidelity has left an eternal mark on my essence. And, Mark Bockley, whose humility, honoring, and rooted way with indigenous dagara wisdom continues to inform my cosmology. I give deep praise for each of them and for all those who’ve weaved blessing, the holy, and beauty within my cells from the moment I was ushered forth into this world. Behold.