I was an artist before I was a nurse.

As a little girl, I could lose myself for hours making things. I dreamed of becoming an artist and carried an equally deep desire to help people who were hurting.

But somewhere along the way, I was told what so many creative people are told:

You can't make a living making art.

So I became a nurse.

For more than two decades, I had the privilege of walking alongside people through some of life's hardest and holiest moments.

Birth.
Illness.
Loss.
Healing.
Beginnings and endings.

Nursing taught me something I have never forgotten:

People are never just problems to solve.

We are whole people.

Body. Soul. Spirit.

And our stories matter.

Then life became my greatest teacher.

Grief entered my life early.

I lost my first boyfriend. Years later, my father died by suicide. Eventually, I would lose my brother too.

There were chapters of my life I never would have chosen—and a life that looked very different from the one I once imagined.

I adapted.

I kept going.

I learned.

I helped other people.

But underneath it all, I was trying to understand:

How do we live whole when life has a way of fragmenting us?

That question led me beyond nursing and into whole-person health, coaching, psychology, story, faith, creativity, and the ways human beings change.

And eventually, it led me back to where I began.

The canvas.

The canvas gave me another way of seeing.

There were things I understood intellectually that I couldn't seem to reach through words alone.

But when I began putting story onto paper—through color, image, symbol, texture, and paint—something changed.

What had felt tangled became visible.

I could step back.

See patterns.

Notice what I had been carrying.

Recognize what remained.

Imagine something different.

The canvas brought clarity.

That discovery became the foundation of the work I do today.

I call it Artful Storywork™—a creative practice for making the invisible visible.

Because sometimes we need another way of seeing before we can find another way of being.

Today, I help women find beauty in the life they have.

I bring together the heart of a nurse and the eye of an artist to help women give expression to what they're carrying, see their stories with new eyes, and create from what remains.

Through Finding Beautiful™, I help women navigate a life that didn't turn out exactly as planned.

Not by pretending the losses didn't happen.

Not by trying to get their old lives back.

But by learning to see God, themselves, and their stories through the lens of grace.

Grieve what was.

Find beauty in what remains.

Faithfully create what comes next.

Through Restoration Art™, I translate the stories of people, families, communities, and organizations into original abstract works—making visible what mattered through color, mark, texture, symbol, and meaningful fragments.

And through creative facilitation, I bring story and creative practice into groups and gatherings to help people reflect, connect, and see what can be difficult to see through words alone.

Different expressions.

One belief underneath them all:

Creativity gives us another language for the things words cannot always hold.

Another way to make meaning.

Another way to imagine.

Another way to see.

And sometimes—

we need another way of seeing before we can find another way of being.

Welcome to Whole Soul Studio™.