My work has appeared widely online and in print. Go ahead! Google me. ;)

I'm a Texas woman. I've lived in Irving (near Dallas, where I grew up), Austin (where I graduated from UT in '74), Houston (where I married hubby number one), San Antonio (where my daughter was born) and Bulverde (in the Hill Country north of San Antonio).

I've lived in Bulverde for thirty-eight years surrounded by cactus, limestone, opossum, racoon, white-tail, skunk, hawks, ravens, vultures, wild hogs, coyote, and even mountain lion. I've been married to my hubby for forty years and we raised three kids together who are now grown with kids of their own. I have three g-sons and one g-daughter!

I am introverted, creative, complicated, sensitive, intense, stubborn, serious, playful & compassionate; I love nature and wild places (you'll find lots of this in my poems).

I am the author of three collections of poetry: what she holds (Moon Shadow Sanctuary, 2020), what holds her (Main Street Rag, 2019) and words gone wild (forthcoming, 2021 from Kelsay Books' Daffydowndilly Press).

what holds her is a collection of ecstatic verse that I claim (and maintain) came to me and that I took down as a sort of dictation as I processed the death of both my parents within twenty-nine days of one another in 2009. I believe it holds a profound teaching that was meant especially for me and for me to share with the world.

In its writing, what she holds, my second collection, served as both process and transformative tool, helping me to heal the difficult relationship I had with my father, posthumously. Any woman who has experienced a form of love-hate will strongly relate and hopefully, be encouraged to heal as well.

I wrote the almost-a-memoir novel Making Room for George: a love story (Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, 2016) as a way to process what was happening to my life when my father-in-law, George, moved in with us. It's a tender, humorous, bitter-sweet story of lives unraveling: his and mine.

words gone wild is a collection of rhymed verse for children, poems I've written over the past several decades.

Finally, I am founder and managing editor of the small Indie press, Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press. In that capacity, I have served as managing editor for three anthologies: The Larger Geometry: poems for peace (peaceCenter Books 2018), Through Layered Limestone: a Texas Hill Country Anthology of place (Friends of the Boerne Library, 2019), and purifying wind (Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, 2020). Each purchase of the first two collections directly benefits either the peaceCenter San Antonio or the Patrick Heath Public Library in Boerne, Texas. I am beginning work on a fourth anthology, milagros: everyday miracles (working title, forthcoming Oct. 2021 from The Friends of the Boerne Library).

I've made the difficult, fiduciary decision to close my blog, moving my commentary and other writings to social media so look for me on Face Book as Formidable Woman Sanctuary, Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press and Spirit World: paintings, poems and prayers.

I am delighted you are here. Thanks for your support of my work in the world. Let me know what you think of my work. Ask me a question. I'll tell you almost anything!

Namste,

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