“Instructions for living a life,
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
- Mary Oliver
Seeing. Creating. Being.
Not simply things I do, but the way I move through the world.
I believe God is continually inviting us to wake up and notice His beauty, create from our truest selves, and become more fully who He designed us to be.
This has been my healing and transformation journey from where all of my art has poured, and now it’s my vocation. It was never about becoming someone new. For all of us, it’s about stripping away everything that is not truly us and coming home to the version of ourselves that God created long ago. When I began to embody my belovedness, I began living my life as God’s poetry.
I don’t teach others how to become someone else.
I create spaces where they can remember who they already are in Christ, and practice living from that place.
Through art, creativity, words, contemplative practices, deep reflection, nurturing rhythms, and wholehearted conversation, I create beautiful spaces where healing gives way to wonder, beauty becomes a way of seeing, and ordinary life becomes sacred again. Within these spaces, I invite others to awaken to the God who has been present all along and discover the freedom of living as the beloved masterpiece they already are.
I'm a multidisciplinary teaching artist, workshop facilitator, Certified Therapeutic Arts Practitioner, writer, published poet, ministry leader, life coach, and perpetual beauty gatherer. But before any title, I am God’s poetry, a beloved daughter of Jesus, and everything I create flows from that identity.
Seeing.
I have always been a collector of beauty.
August’s wildflowers pressed between book pages. Honest conversations. Shifting shadows on my wall from the morning sun filtered through a tree. Heart shaped rocks tucked into my pocket. Well earned laugh lines. Words that nurture. October’s purple. A new mom’s exhaustion. My own old patterns resurfacing. Quiet moments when God gently reshapes the soul.
I believe paying attention is a spiritual practice. The more we learn to notice, the more we discover that God's fingerprints have been present all along. Healing our sight is a big part of the transformation journey. When I saw the world through wounded lenses, it affected how I saw God, myself, everyone around me, and His creation.
Creating.
Art is not only one of the ways I pray, it is how I live my life as God’s poetry. It is my offering to Him and the world.
I don't believe creativity belongs only to artists. As image bearers of the Most Creative, it is woven into every person’s very being, and as God’s poems (Ephesians 2:10), we are all created to create in the world - our lives are living art.
Whether I'm making intuitive mixed-media artwork, writing poetry, leading workshops, recording quotes in my commonplace journal, walking slowly and noticing, comforting someone in their grief, sharing a story, singing car-aoke with a hairbrush microphone, laughing with a friend, praying on my drive to the store, or facilitating sacred creative practices, my hope is the same: that beauty in all forms becomes a doorway into healing, wonder, and deeper communion with God.
Being.
For many years, I spent more energy becoming who I thought I should be than discovering who God had already created me to be.
Healing has taught me that transformation isn't about striving, it's about surrender. It's about becoming rooted in our identity as beloved children of God and allowing everything else to grow from there.
Whether we're creating together, coaching one-on-one, sitting quietly with Scripture, or simply sharing a conversation over tea, my desire is to offer a space where people feel seen, safe, and gently invited toward the abundant life Jesus promises.
Today, I offer creative workshops, retreats, one-on-one life coaching, and therapeutic arts experiences for adults and teens from my home studio and throughout the Wake Forest, North Carolina community. My deepest hope is that every gathering helps people encounter beauty, embrace their God-given design, and leave a little more awake to the presence of God in their everyday lives.
Beauty From Ashes
I have always been someone who notices.
As a little girl, while everyone else wore Christmas red, I convinced my mom to let me wear my favorite purple outfit on stage. Looking back, I smile because that little girl already knew something I've spent the rest of my life rediscovering - that God delights in the unique ways He has created each of us.
For many years, I stepped away from art and pursued business. But during one of the hardest seasons of my life, God gently led me back to creativity. What began as survival became worship. Through painting, poetry, journaling, and the practice of noticing beauty, He met me in places words alone never could.
The past several years have included profound loss, chronic illness, trauma, and circumstances I never would have chosen. Yet I've witnessed firsthand that God truly makes beauty from ashes. He wastes nothing. Much of what I now teach has been learned in the quiet places where He faithfully met me.
Today, I create and lead from that place of hope.
Whether I'm gathering wildflowers on a morning walk, filling journals with prayers, leading a creative workshop, coaching someone one-on-one, or marveling over a butterfly wing with my family, I'm continually reminded that beauty isn't a luxury, it is one of God's sustaining graces.
Everything I offer is an invitation to slow down, notice His presence, embrace the person He created you to be, and discover that healing and wonder often grow together.
"When people cease to be surrounded by beauty, they cease to hope." — N.T. Wright
Five Fun Facts
I once sang in the car for 5 hours straight on a drive back from the beach, and was sad when our family finally arrived home because I wanted to keep singing. I love karaoke and have posted a few of our family’s caraoke posts on Instagram. Derrick and I enjoy practicing karaoke in the car on date nights and have a playlist of songs that we would be ready to sing for karaoke if and when the opportunity presents itself.
I love the cornchip smell of my dog’s paws. Although, I have learned that means they have fungus or something and I should probably treat it.
I grew up exposed to lots of various GREAT music and enjoy sharing my diverse taste with my children and teaching them what great music really is. While he was living, my maternal grandfather, an army major, taught me all about WWII music and that’s when I learned to love jazz, jazz standards and big band. My paternal grandfather, a pastor, exposed me to classic hymns and spirituals. My mom and dad were in a shag dance club and exposed me to beach music/motown, soul and would listen to doo wop, and other great oldies, as well as the pop of that time which grew my love of 70’s easy listening and ALL 80’s music. My brother listened to east coast rap and jam-bands, like The Grateful Dead, and my best friend’s parents listened to classic rock. I have an affinity for indie, alternative, and rock-n-roll like Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Fleetwood Mac. One of my favorite things to do with friends is sit around the fire pit, or pool, or any relaxed setting and listen to or sing good music. I have enjoyed making playlists all my life - as a high school student for my friends, as gifts for all of the guests at our wedding, for Derrick on our anniversary, for Naomi’s birthdays every year and I enjoy making ‘Get Pumped Up for Baseball/Basketball/Soccer’ playlists for the boys, too.
I have a diverse work background and before re-entering the art world, I was an award-winning salesperson for an international hotel chain, a medical device salesperson for a major pharmaceutical company, chief sales and marketing officer for a company I started, and with my entrepreneurial spirit and business degree, I started several other businesses throughout my career, as well as did some business consulting on the side. I was even a farmer! All of this feels like a past life now that I have immersed myself in the art world.
I cry easily and I have learned to not hold back or hide it. Just the other day, my son rescued a dove that was caught in a baseball batting cage net and he held it lovingly for an hour or two before we had to leave the field. The next day, we checked on the dove in the safe spot we’d placed it and it had died. We both cried and cried, not concerned about who saw. It’s so important to feel the feels, yall! For far too long, I hid them from others because I thought I was “too much” but now I embrace all of these parts of myself beautifully.
A Few Things I Can’t Stand (because it’s fun to know these things, right?)
Yes, this may seem like an odd thing to include on a website but I love learning this about others so in case you do, too, here are a few of mine:
One of the worst things in the entire world to me is when my fingernail bends backward. Eghhhhehehehhehe, I’m having a hard time even typing this out it affects me so badly, like in my core, and makes my skin crawl to even imagine it. Egh.
Something else that drives me nuts like no other is when something is rolling around in the backseat while I’m driving or riding in the car. The absolute worst of all is a Perplexus, with the little metal ball rolling around the hard plastic maze, but water bottles and other weighty objects that can roll around and make all that ruckus are pretty bad, too.
I am really affected by bad things happening to animals…perhaps more than the typical person. I have a really hard time watching educational nature shows that include the good, bad and ugly. As much as I love nature and learning about it, I am deeply affected by the prey-predator relationship when it’s shown on television. And don’t get me started on people mistreating animals, and those heart-wrenching ASPCA commercials.
