About My Work

I think that most of us love stories. We read them nightly to our Little Ones; we go to movies; we read books; we watch a favorite serial drama; we listen to the adventure, challenge and emotion that our loved ones go through in the arc of their lives. In some ways, I believe, it is this draw to stories that “fit” for me as a profession, a career. As a psychologist and therapist, I listen to people's stories.

But I have come to know that it's not just any story that holds, inspires or moves me. The stories that do that for me are the ones that have to do with themes like family, love, heart, weakness, courage, redemption. In other words, stories about that crazy, spinning, opening and closing, fragile, tender and beautiful thing we call Real Life.

Every story in my two books (Sitting in the Circle and Completing the Circle) are true and were the result of my work with patients in my office for 45 years, or with participants at an Opening the Heart workshop which I have led for 36 years. I have changed the names, ages and circumstances of all the people involved in these stories in an attempt to protect their confidentiality. The Heart workshop originally started in 1976 at a place called Spring Hill in Ashby, Massachusetts by Dr. Robert Gass. When Spring Hill closed its' doors in 1998, the workshop continued, primarily at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York and at Kripalu Institute for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

The stories run the gamut of the real life continuum from tragedy and heartbreak to resilience and humor. But each story was chosen because it re-lit a flame inside me that yearns to become a more loving being on this tiny, crowded, hurting planet.