Since the age of 13, I have consistently been working with groups and individuals in a teaching / tutoring / mentoring role, both professionally and as a community service. In formal educational settings, my students have ranged from pre-K to the graduate level. Aside from the fulfillment I derive from being of service to others, I just really love being there when something “clicks.” It truly gives me vicarious pleasure to witness that moment of expansion.
While I was teaching college students, I started noticing that I was not only invested in their intellectual development, but also their preparations for entering the “real world.” In fact, I realized that what I enjoyed most about working with undergraduates were those casual conversations about their lives and visions for their future. This realization led me to leave academia and enter youth development. Through a series of synchronicities I found myself called to serving young people aging out of foster care. I felt a deep resonance between their journey into adulthood with my own career transition because we were all asking ourselves the exact same questions: Who am I? What is my place in the world?
Although my current clients are adults of all ages—from recent grads to retirees—I continue to be drawn to individuals in transition, and they to me. My work is geared toward those who are standing at a crossroads, feeling lost in the woods, or preparing to step into uncharted territory. These are life’s juiciest moments, with the greatest potential for growth. These sorts of challenges call forth in us the capacity to tap into our strong, stable center so we can claim our highest truth and move forward with courage and integrity.
I believe that to find our truest and highest place in the world requires first and foremost finding a place that feels like home within. We are able to serve, create, and contribute most powerfully when we know ourselves deeply and expansively. Self-interest gets a bad rap because its shadow aspect can throw things out of balance, but that does not negate the paradoxical truth that by becoming earnestly, intensely, and devotionally interested in the Self, we find our way back not only to wholeness, but to oneness with All That is.
If we could speak of such a thing as an “end goal” here, it isn’t merely self empowerment; it is Oneness. To connect with the Brilliant System is ultimately to pierce through the veil of separation, in order to remember, claim, and restore our unique, irreplaceable, indispensable, integral, and essential place in all of creation.