Twenty one years in the corporate field in various careers as a National Accounts Sales Mgr for the western USA, Contract Sales for Eastern USA, Geographic Development for USA, Market Research Analyst for Real Estate Development, Public Relations, Marketing, Fashion & Advertising saw much travel ...several years averaging 48 weeks per year. While working harder with less satisfaction I was acutely aware that my life path was not this path however monetarily rewarding & egotistically gratifying. I knew that I wanted to be in 'Human Services' but nothing felt quite right. Ten years of declining satisfaction & doing nothing about it was not what my 'higher self' had in mind. So I found myself in major corporate acquisition & merger games & out of a job. Imagine that! I actually felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from my being! But where was I to go? I was not yet aware that my higher self had a plan.
At this time I had already been introduced to an amazing woman & a group of kindred spirits involved in personal & intuitive development. I was excited about continuing a life long interest in intuitive arts & a 'fit spiritual condition'. This meditation group, over the past 20 years, has been one of the important 'cogs in my wheel of life' & is even more so today as each of us is strongly encouraged to find our 'unique' contribution to this universe ... our reason to walk this earth.
Two years after my introduction to Dr. June d'Estelle, I conveniently took a fall off my horse while jumping a cross country 'wall' & hurting my back quite badly. This directed me to work with a deep tissue bodyworker who was also a yogi, a vegetarian & a spiritual man exposing me to a life lived simply & to someone who 'walked his talk'. Oh, I still had ideas that I would be accepting one of the high paying positions with 70 hour work weeks I had been offered or for which I was interviewing. While that kept me distracted my experience was opening to another direction.
In working with the yogi I was reminded of my love of yoga & massage which I had studied while living in Miami Fla 11 yrs earlier & had not practiced. I loved the contemplative yoga time & eagerly began to look forward to my 5x per week practice & daily meditation practice.
While reading a San Francisco Bay Area Wholistic magazine I was moved to tears & could feel my heart open as I read an article of a blind man who taught himself to see & went on to teach others. I can still remember asking, with every cell of my being, to be a part of this healing wave. And so, opening a door on a 'path with heart' I found myself in a rapidly moving river of heart-full & wonder-full moments of terrific folks & back-to-back certifications in my areas of interests. It still took me a couple months to have that 'ah-ha' moment where I realized that this was where I could fit, use all of my life experiences & make a difference. The courses I took all came so naturally. In an intensely concentrated 6 months I had received certifications in several areas (Education, Certifications & Study).
Within a few weeks of completing my first 6 month certifications marathon I met an amazing, wonderful & inspirational man, Barney Brown (now my husband!), with whom I opened a Wholisitic Institute north of San Francisco. We opened 4 office spaces & rented to 10 -14 wholistic practitioners while maintaining our own private practices. The Institute also had a classroom space where we offered workshops, seminars, certification courses, yoga & meditation to the community. In addition, we also opened a massage business with 4 massage offices, several staff & a classroom space for yoga, meditation & workshops in a nearby town.
I practiced the healing arts in both Sausalito & Santa Rosa, California as an Emotional & Physical Transformation Therapist & Coach using hypnosis, bodywork, energy work & mentoring while teaching intuitive development & life as a 'bigger picture' connected with Spirit.
While I loved the work & the people with whom I was working it seemed I was, once again, in that fast moving river only this time it was an ocean. My life partner wished to take 10 years to sail around the world so I listened to the small voice that said 'Go!... all is well '.
Being on a sailboat, seemingly alone on the sea, one 'sees', sometimes for the first time, life's dramas & the misconceptions we are sold & which we buy daily. Barney & I sailed for 4 yrs, approximately 17,000 miles & to 11 countries. What an eye-opener - what we have as a country & don't have; what we have lost in the quest for material goodies; the beauty & creativity of all peoples in all countries; their love of community, family & spirit. What gifts I received from them! While I experienced the beauty of the sea I also felt the agony of witnessing the destruction of oceans, bays, & sea life & the economic poverty of many.
We returned to this country 4 years later & continued to sail occasionally & live aboard our sailboat for 2 more years, this time on the east coast, while deciding if we wished to cross 'the pond'. After much deliberation we chose not to continue circumnavigating & not to return to California - to stay in the East & set anchor in the Shenandoah Valley. Barney & I purchased a Bed & Breakfast, which we ran very successfully. Two & a half years later we purchased a beautiful farm & sold the B&B shortly thereafter.
Barney & I got married September 2004 in the Tuscany region of Italy, on a magnificent estate in the edge of an olive grove, overlooking the vineyards & Tuscan hillside at sunset. It doesn't get more romantic than that!
So, here I am today, married to a truly wonderful man with whom my personal growth & my horizons have expanded in very many ways ... & without whom we could not have this very special gathering place on our beautiful farm to share with kindred spirits.
In 2006 I founded the World Love Project™. This farm is the headquarters for this Love Project & as such the Celebration of Love comes under it's umbrella. Our retreat has been created as a gathering place for art classes, art exhibits, music gatherings, nature enthusiasts, writers, poetry readings, story telling, social gatherings, nature walks, full moon walks, healing circles & spiritual groups & in the not so distant future, residential intensives - writing, meditation, hypnosis, energy work, vision quests etc.
Thank you for your interest in this site & being open to the celebration of LOVE ... romantic love, love of nature, friendship, family & the world we live IN & the earth we live ON. I thank each of you for sharing your LOVE with all of us on the planet & for your awareness of future generations needing our love NOW to heal pains of this earth TODAY.
May each & everyone of us experience a renewed awareness of the Creator's pure, unconditional, never ending love. As Neale Donald Walsh says: Remember to always ask yourself . . . 'What would LOVE do now? '
