More fortunate than most, I’ve had my share of trials and troubles. My childhood yearning for love lingered well into my adulthood. I was in my mid-forties when I found words for my life’s purpose. I want to change the world’s operating system from one founded on fear to one grounded in love.
It’s been said that the best way to get something you want is to give it away. I wanted to have children in my life and to teach them to love. I started Wonder & Wisdom’s heart-based after school and summer enrichment programs in 1999 and discovered I had a whole lot to learn about love. I am forever grateful for “my children” and for the caring adults who loved us all into new possibilities.
Wonder & Wisdom gained some national attention when I was on the Advisory Board of the ChildSpirit Institute based in Carrollton, Georgia. I met Parker Palmer around the same time and became involved with the Center for Courage & Renewal. My heart was expanding exponentially when people in the community began asking me if Wonder & Wisdom could work with adults the way we were engaging with children.
We were closely collaborating with the school at the time. It was obvious that being a teacher or school administrator was taxing. We started working with teachers to both support them and to hold space for them to support each other. When I stepped away from Wonder & Wisdom in 2013, our work with teachers came with me as a Co-Founder of WholeHeart, Inc.
WholeHeart’s Founding Mothers spent many days in my office defining our core principles. A nautilus emerged as our logo, each chamber representing a different aspect of personal wellness as well as the wellness of organizations, work-teams, families, and communities. The center of WholeHeart’s nautilus is a heart, just as our hearts are the center of our being, our inner wisdom, our love spark. My unofficial title at WholeHeart was Spark of Divine Mischief. Emerson, my dear doggy who attended all meetings, was WholeHeart’s Ambassador of Unconditional Love.
Grace is the inner chamber of WholeHeart’s nautilus—where our hearts open. Subsequent chambers focus on our emotional, intellectual, physical, social, and cultural lives. We discovered that the spiral of the nautilus works in both directions, from the inside out and from the outside in. The Wonder & Wisdom kids taught me to start where you are.
WholeHeart quickly expanded beyond the classroom and included in-person retreats and virtual programs. When COVID hit, they went global online. A caring community emerged to share a deepening practice of listening to ourselves and to each other with love and grace.
Post pandemic, WholeHeart is focusing on the love-home in each of our hearts and is honoring its community committed to living love in action. I marvel at the daily miracles of life when I open my heart to Grace. This is a time of gratitude and grace for WholeHeart, Inc. I am still learning to let go and let Grace.
Life is a labor of love.