I love a good cup of coffee. I feel alive when hiking a trail near my home or on a bike with the wind in my face. I relish well-crafted sentences in books of poetry, neuroscience, spiritual formation, or fiction. I also love playing pinball, ping pong, and Dominion. I’ve been married to Brent for over three decades, and we’ve adventured around the country and the world with our four children. I started out my adult life as an engineer and then became a campus minister. After raising and homeschooling my kids, I’m now passionate about helping people tend to the heartache, trauma, and confusion in their stories.

In 2016, I was spellbound hearing Dan Allender tell his story at a conference. At that point, I felt stuck in my marriage, polarized in my inner world, and cynical about the future. And I didn’t think I had much of a story. I grew up in a good family where I had the privilege of music lessons, cross-country skiing, and healthy food. Yet I struggled to feel worthy of love and felt deeply responsible for how other people felt. Plus I was raised in a Christian context with the hope of experiencing the promises of God but felt unable to find a path of peace and confidence. For decades, I poured out my heartache in journals, read a lot of books, prayed, studied the Bible, talked with a few friends, and tried really hard to show up the way a good Christian woman was “supposed” to show up.

In 2018, still intrigued by Dan’s work, I enrolled in the NFTC1 training program at The Allender Center. As part of this program, I had to write childhood stories of harm and share them in the context of a group with a skilled facilitator. My stories didn’t seem worthy of the overwhelming anxiety I felt when sharing them. What happened over the course of that year changed the trajectory of my life! I was undone by the kind faces of those in my group and their unexpected anger on my behalf. I was strangely comforted by the presence of others with me in my anxiety and by how they engaged me with tender questions and honest reflections. As a result, I began to grapple with how I interpreted my story because those who engaged me offered unfamiliar honor, kindness, and understanding. I started to wonder if I felt a lot of anxiety, not because I was broken or incapable of trusting God, but because my story held more heartache and emotion than I realized.

Engaging my story has reoriented my life and brought significant healing to my relationships! While the facts of my life have not changed, their meaning is radically different. Engaging my story has led to a more loving and curious posture towards myself and a more generous posture towards those closest to me.