THE BUSINESS OF
TRUTH TELLING
—

Growing up in Washington DC, I learned to value ideas and curiosity at an early age. My father was a Federal Administrator and my mother was a Civil Rights Attorney. By the time I was in elementary school, I was navigating the public bus system on my own. There was no parent carpool line in my life; instead, I was expected to figure things out for myself-- and I did. Independence was a must for me as the oldest child of parents who worked long days in a landscape of hustle and burn. I graduated from The Sidwell Friends School and started college at age 16. After obtaining my degree from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, I moved quickly and intentionally to the warmer South. On the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I found my home by the sea and worked as a teacher and theater director. In the Outer Banks, I met and married the father of my children: first, a beautiful baby boy, John Barton and then, three years later, my beloved daughter, Marina Leck.

I am a motherless daughter; I lost my mom because she was murdered. I was 24  and she was 44. Painfully, her death sent me into a spiral of second guessing and not trusting myself. At my core, I was convinced there must be something profoundly wrong with me because my mother --my home-- was missing. Loneliness and low grade despair were a constant backdrop to a life jammed with surface activity. The wolf of my fears was usually at the door of my imagination. I got lost in the grief of my mother’s death for a long time. I failed. I got divorced. I was a single mom for a while. It was a hard time in so many ways.

Eventually, I met my current partner, Jenn Dixon, a true nurturer, who taught me about the power of a strong WE, about secure attachment, and tolerating the discomfort a long-term relationship sometimes brings. Jenn showed me what it is to know that someone always has my back. We have been together for about twenty years now. We were married in 2014, as soon as same sex marriage was legal in the United States. And now, after multiple relocations for Jenn’s career, we’ve come full circle and ended up back by the salt marsh on the Outer Banks of North Carolina where we first met. I  consider my coupleship to be one of the most important assets of my life span. I ask myself each day: What have I done today to cultivate my WE?

I’m in my fifties now. I am older, wiser and oddly happier. I’ve done a lot of work on myself. Years of talk therapy and most significantly, I received a Masters Degree from North Carolina State University in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and, in 2015,  I graduated from The School for The Work with Byron Katie.

I have now been alive a decade longer than my mother lived. Two kind and curious adult children grace my life. My wife and I just built our dream house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It’s a new decade. I am changed: I rerouted from my career as a teacher to become a therapist; I am now changing again, launching my next chapter as a Relationship Healer. I work with men, women and couples who are frustrated, stuck or in relationship crisis.

I help pull people out of stuck and into connection. As a seasoned therapist and Licensed Professional Counselor, my superpower is holding space for adults, usually parents, who find themselves fighting, hopeless or just frozen with a problem or something that feels awful. I know that feeling. I know awful and I know how to find the other side. Work with me? Let me help you return to a place of peace, connection and secure attachment.