Member Profile

am the oldest of 4, with a younger brother and 2 younger sisters.  Our father was in the Air Force, so we moved every couple of years, a habit I continued after college at Barat, working with DD children and teens in Illinois, going to graduate school in psychology at Western Michigan University, internship in Mississippi, and back to Michigan for post-doctoral training. I came back to Chicago to the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, where I have worked with patients suffering chronic pain for 30 years.  Along the way I met my husband Jon and we spent 2 good years in New Orleans while he was getting his MSW at Tulane.

My spiritual practice began 25 years ago in a hatha yoga class.  In yoga practice I began to experience – for brief flashes – being completely in the moment and in my body.  I didn’t know until then that such a thing was possible and began to explore both yoga and meditation to get more of that sense of peace and expansiveness.  At the same time, the field of psychology was beginning to use meditation techniques and I was able to integrate some of those techniques to also help my patients.

I sought out ZLMC to help me deepen my practice, with the support of the community, and in so doing have become more interested in Buddhism as a belief system, while my primary interest remains direct experience.

My hobbies are reading, traveling, kayaking or canoeing with my husband, volunteering at PAWS -  walking dogs.