Before astrology, I worked for many years as a psychiatric nurse and concurrently as a myofascial therapist in outpatient physical therapy. I loved myofascial work, but after doing it for so long, my body, especially my wrist, began to tell me I couldn’t continue in the same way. Around that time, a client handed me a cassette tape of an astrologer giving a lecture. I listened, and something inside me woke up. It spoke to me in a way I didn’t yet understand, but I knew I had to follow it.
That calling led me to drive from Montana to Santa Fe to take my first astrology workshop. I began reading everything I could before I even arrived, because once I commit to something, I go deep. What I discovered was a system that felt incredibly rich, both technical and intuitive. Astrology offered structure, geometry, timing, and language, but it also invited intuition, synthesis, and insight. It felt like something my mind and my intuition had been waiting for.
I began offering readings soon after, and my practice grew quickly, faster than I expected. People came from long distances, and many returned again and again. At the same time, it became clear that astrology wasn’t just a new skill. It was a transition. As my body stepped away from hands-on physical work, astrology stepped fully forward.
I’ve been practicing astrology since 1993 and have been published numerous times in The Mountain Astrologer. My writing has explored topics such as Saturn returns, Chiron through the houses, and the deeper psychological and spiritual dimensions of astrology. Over the years, I’ve also studied extensively on my own, reading both classic and esoteric authors, and I continue to learn through my clients, who are always my greatest teachers.
One of the defining moments in my work came about ten years into my practice, during what I can only call a crisis of faith in astrology. While writing about Chiron entering the fourth house, the house of parents, I discovered that Chiron was entering my own fourth house at that exact time. That same evening, I received news of my father’s death. The timing was precise enough to shake me deeply. I stepped away from astrology for nearly two years, wrestling with the question of fate versus free will.
That question ultimately became central to my philosophy. Through my own reflection and with the help of teachers like Caroline Myss, I came to understand that while the birth chart contains patterns and potentials, it does not remove our agency. There is fate in the chart, but there is also choice. There are gifts embedded there. There are challenges. What matters is how we meet them.
That understanding brought me back to astrology with greater clarity and humility.
One of my favorite parts of this work is helping people recognize desires and talents they’ve known about, but pushed aside. I’ll see something in the chart and say, “You’d be very good at this.” It resonates, and it often scares them. And then, beautifully, they go do it. To validate what someone already knows deep inside themselves, and to watch them step into it, is one of the great joys of my work.
