the last place I’d expect to be
If you met me at age 20, you would know that teaching mindfulness meditation is the last place I’d expect to be.
I was boisterous. Like loud. Like if you we were in a room together, even if we weren’t seated next to one another, you could probably hear my end of whatever conversation I was having.
I was driven. Being “enough” wasn’t enough. I had to be great. I had to be perfect. This was reflected most clearly in my dogged pursuit of academic greatness (eventually graduating Summa Cum Laude).
Oh and I had to be the funniest person in the room. If I wasn’t, I would passive-aggressively bully whoever was in fact the funniest person in the room into shutting up.
I was top dog. Had to be. My sense of self-esteem was so brittle that it was “Brilliance of Bust.”
the other last place
On graduating from college I went from the classroom to working in an Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. I traded the relative safety of books and syllabi, of exams and papers, for the persistent stress and uncertainty of managing life and death situations.
I was not prepared for this.
Granted, I had a 6-month on-boarding process at the hospital. I had excellently trained nurse colleagues guiding my development as a healthcare practitioner. But what made the difference was what I didn’t have: skills for managing the stress, anxiety and PTSD that accompanied my working full-time in the intensive care environment.
Two years in I was burnt out. For all my learning and striving — I could not maintain. This was the other last place I expected to be: in my dream job, living a nightmare.
One night a colleague turned to me and offered “Hey, there’s this thing called mindfulness. It provides this step-wise way for reducing stress and anxiety. Maybe you should check it out.”
They didn’t know it at the time (neither did I!), but in that simple exchange, they changed the direction of my life.
the journey so far
I subsequently enrolled in and completed an 8-week Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at the Penn Program for Mindfulness.
The effects of learning mindfulness meditation on my body, mind, emotions and life were so profoundly positive that I resolved to do whatever training was necessary to become an authentic mindfulness meditation teacher.
I met my own teachers, Scott and Nancy McBride, in the summer of 2014. I subsequently completed their 2-year, 900-hour Meditation Teacher Training in 2017. In total I spent 7 years of study with them at ClearLight Meditation Institute, traveling the depths and breadth of the path of meditation.
Years on, and just as they encouraged, I weave mindfulness, meditation, neuroscience and psychology together to provide insights, classes and events geared to bring out the best in others.
I am ever-grateful to them for their support and education.
Having deeply realized the benefits of mindfulness meditation, it is my mission to bring mindfulness to as wide and varied an audience as possible. I strive to provide mindfulness meditation practice that is clear, direct, and evidence-based.
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