I thought retirement was going to be the beginning of one chapter of my life. Instead, it became the unraveling of everything I thought I knew.

Within a short period of time, I lost my mother, retired after thirty-three years as an educator, and experienced an unexpected estrangement from my adult son. I did what I had always done when life presented me with a problem:

I went looking for answers.

What I found was something entirely different.

My search led me from grief and estrangement into Reiki, energy healing, and eventually a Kundalini awakening that challenged the analytical teacher in me and changed the direction of my life.

Somewhere along the way, I began to understand that perhaps the painful experiences in our lives aren't merely things to survive. Sometimes, they become invitations—to question, to heal, to release, to grow, and ultimately, to become someone we could not have become without them.

I have a name for those experiences:

SOULgressions.

Today, as a Reiki Practitioner, writer, and lifelong student of personal transformation, I help others navigate their own SOULgressions—the losses, ruptures, transitions, and unexpected detours that can leave us wondering, Why is this happening to me?

I don't pretend to have that answer.

But I have become deeply curious about another question:

What might this experience be asking of me?

Through Reiki, reflective practices, writing, and service in hospitals, community settings, and private sessions, I create space for people to explore that question for themselves—to find meaning within difficulty, reconnect with their own inner wisdom, and perhaps discover that what felt like an ending may also contain the beginnings of something new.

I spent thirty-three years believing my classroom was where I was meant to teach.

These days, I'm beginning to wonder if life had another classroom in mind.