About

I explore meaning-making personally and professionally. I have always been interested in what makes people “tick,” what motivates people, why people get along (or not), and generally how people make sense of their lives.

My interests in art, self-help, and identity construction turned into formal research. I became interested in authenticity, definitions of success and how people found or defined their sense of purpose. This led into an interest to go beyond academic research and ways that I could help people “make sense” of their potentially difficult situations; major life transitions, feeling stuck, becoming victims of their own success, or generally just feeling listless. This also led me down the path of studying creativity and innovation.

In effect, I started to study and ponder just about everything around the topics of meaning-making – living meaningful lives. As I was also trying to make sense of fair amount in my life, it started to feel like a blend of auto-ethnography with social-psychological research.

Even so, being rather traditionally trained, I felt as though I had to keep my life and research separate. That led to a lot of creative false starts in figuring out how to share my thoughts and findings when I wasn’t exactly sure how they were all going to come together.

Then, after the passing of a family member, my husband shared with me the poem by Linda Ellis called “The Dash.” Perhaps it was the timing of it, but it kicked something into a different gear. I had to embrace the not-knowing and just start doing and sharing. While it can sound so stereotypical, I realized that yes – I could end up with words unexpressed, thoughts that I didn’t at least “put out there.”

Many of the quips that I thought were perhaps overused suddenly really did start to hit home. It can be difficult as I can feel both inspired by and critical of the same quotes and concepts, which will end up being a running theme. So, here I am – putting it all out there messily to see how this can help create a more substantial dash.