About Me: Distilled
I burned hot from the beginning in this life. I needed to know what within me was real. And I needed to live it no matter the cost. And it cost me plenty.
I'm a mystic who paid for her life with her life. An alchemist who plowed under every bit of her treasure on the path to inner gold.
This is the way it often is for those who can't not go the way of soul.
There is fire and flood and ferment and rot. Great heights and insufferable depths. It is treacherous, and it is beautiful. And you may or may not survive. But if you do, you can rise and say...
I am what the fire left behind.
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Storyline
I was 16 when I read Codependent No More by Melody Beattie at the behest of my counselor at the time. It rocked my world. Ever since then, I’ve been on a mission to unlearn the relational model I was born into, reconnect with my innate worth and creative power, and build relational spaces that foster autonomy and interconnection. The journey has been a spiral with some terrible turns, lulls, major shadow work, grief that has nearly killed me, and freedom to match it.
At age nineteen, I broke off my engagement to my high school sweetheart six weeks before the wedding. This was like tipping the first domino that sent the rest falling. I was not going to be able to live the life that was planned for me, not even the life I planned for me. My heart was too loud for other things.
In my early twenties, I left the Mormon church I was raised in after I had an intense and mystical knowing during Sunday Sacrament meeting from an inner voice that said: This is the last time you’ll go to church. And it was. I walked away that day and never went back. The familial and community fallout that ensued was awful, but the freedom and healing has been unparalleled.
After I graduated from college in 2005, I left my 9-5 job to open a music studio, teach music lessons, and become a performing songwriter. While there was a ton of growth and creative exploration for me during this time, I eventually ended up leaving the stage, closing my teaching business, and entering what I now know was the dark nights of my soul and spirit. (Dark nights of the soul have nothing on the painful and disorienting abandonment that is dark nights of the spirit. See my book The Second Half of the Mountain if you want to learn more about these alchemical stages.)
After leaving my music life in 2010, I began learning about the processes of inner alchemy. And by "learning about" I mean became utterly consumed by and obsessed with. Alchemy gave me context for the processes of deconstruction I was undergoing that I found no reflection for in the culture around me. Having the context of alchemy saved my sanity. Probably fair to say it saved my life.
In 2016 while trying to recover from a major burnout, I drove away from my life of sixteen years in Utah with everything I owned in the trunk of my car. This included leaving a long-term relationship with a beloved soulmate—one of the most searing griefs of my life. I had no idea where I was going to land, but I knew what I needed that I wasn’t getting from the life that had been closing in on me for years. So I risked it all to go find it.
In 2017 I wrote The Second Half of the Mountain: A Guide to Personal Alchemy after Awakening in coffee shops, libraries, and houses of friends and family across the United States.
In 2018 I moved to Hawaii and began healing physically and relationally in ways that are still too close, precious, and deep to write about. My gratitude is off the charts.
March 2024: I published my second book, Down from the Mountain: On Being Human after Spiritual and Alchemical Initiation.
August 2025: I exited social media and took a year-long sabbatical after writing some of my favorite pieces on my Substack, The Terrible Beautiful Truth.
To read about what I’m currently up to, click here.