As a sensitive being born into a family with more than we needed, questions surrounding giving, receiving, privilege, responsibility and equity have been integral to my inner world since childhood.

“How best to serve?” What’s mine to do?” “Where shall I give?” These were my big contemplations amidst a world filled with pain and suffering.

I’ve had the opportunity to explore these themes broadly through many lenses including: religion, spirituality, travel, white-guilt, work and martyr/savior complexes. In my early life I felt called to the mission field—to serve areas of the world rife with division, poverty and violence. From early childhood I was willing to forfeit my life for the sake of sharing what I considered to be the remedy to end all suffering. It was extreme, but there was a seed of purity at its core. I spent many summers volunteering, serving, cleaning, building and evangelizing across many continents.

At 21 I prayed a big prayer: ”God, strip me of whatever parts of my ego need to go in order for me to be of greater service.” Ha! Shit hit the fan and a complete dismantling dropped in hard and fast—cue a 2.5 year dark era of the soul that led me through extreme dis-ease, suicidal depression, terrifying rage and identity-collapse on every level. With lots of support, I chose to live but didn’t know how.

Deeply humbled and uncertain about my place in the world, I released everything I thought I knew and pursued service within the context of secular non-profits and social justice work. Not long after my colleague suggested we adopt a more radical approach for achieving change—such as getting ourselves arrested—I found myself in business school. I completed an MBA/MS before venturing West to start over and begin again. I did a 5 year tour of duty in Silicon Valley, working in Big Tech, entrepreneurship, and private philanthropy. It was a powerful time of learning, exposure and self discovery, yet I found it all wanting.

At the tail end of my 20’s I went through a number of profound changes: lost my brother suddenly to lightning strike; experienced an intense series of health shifts, work closures and relational reorgs; then came a stint of silence, spaciousness and existential exploration in Thailand, which ushered in greater release and clarity. I dabbled in the world of yoga, esoteric practice and eastern spirituality. On the island of Koh Phangan I wept during my first kirtan as I realized that the Love that had moved me since childhood was still there and had been all along. In fact, the truth of me was never separate from it. For Infinite Creativity cannot be confined to a cannon nor constrained to a single expression of luminosity—that divine spark also resides in the core of our being. My embodied experience of “God” was blown open. A wound deep inside of me healed. Something stronger within me was ready to show up and take her place in the world.