I knew from my early childhood that I wanted to become a doctor.  The mysteries of health and disease were something I was thoroughly compelled to investigate with as much depth as possible.  I lived in a suburb adjacent to Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility in Colorado where my father worked as a machinist for just a couple years before he died of cancer.  We then moved north to the country and lived on a small farm.

 

At age 15 I acquired my nurse aid certification through the Front Range Community College healthcare foundations course, a vocational program offered to high schoolers.  I did my training in the Mercy Medical Center emergency room in Loveland and dove in to assist however needed.  From there, I got a job in the Berthoud Living Center nursing home and cared for residents with debilitating diseases and many through their last days of life.  

 

My intention had been to pursue a pre-medicine degree and while the University of Colorado had a great program, I was offered a full scholarship to attend Fort Lewis College in Durango, a place I knew almost nothing about.  Little did I know the experiences in that region would alter my path considerably.  As a liberal arts school, I was required to take a selection of humanities courses alongside the sciences.  I remember distinctly a philosophy course debating how we know love, faith or God exists and how science can prove they don't.  I felt increasingly troubled by this and the information I was learning in the environmental science and sociology courses and experienced the revelation that humanity was on a very dark and destructive path.   

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I continued to work as a CNA as a home health aid with the health department.  I found my experiences revealing a deeply conflicting reality.  My clients were all over the region, many of whom lived on the Navajo reservation.  I noticed a trend that my standard American clients were taking handfuls of pharmaceuticals and struggling with one health crisis after the next.  They seemed to have increasingly complex care and compromised function, needing assistance with nearly all activities of daily living.  Whereas the native elders I worked with drank their herb teas and needed very little assistance from me at all.  They would have me dust ceiling fans, sort the junk mail and organize book shelves for my time with them.

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This exposure to native ways only deepened my dismay and I found myself selecting more botany courses over the pre-medical tract as the exploration of plant wisdom seemed to hold a key to something that I could trust was in right relationship with the Earth.  It was around this time that I discovered a book by Rudolf Steiner that I found relayed something as true as the plant wisdom I was spending my time with.  I was determined to learn more but had nobody in the region who could educate me on these connections.  I corresponded with Dr. Philip Incao, an Anthroposophical doctor in Denver who recommended a few books for me and planted a seed for integrating the many diverse systems of healing with the wisdom of Rudolf Steiner.  

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I experienced a number of life changing tragic events after that time that pushed me to continue questioning not only the nature of reality but the confusing battle of good and evil in this world.  It was then I decided to depart from the dominant paradigm as much as possible and take full ownership of my impact in the world.  I bought a native American tipi and was offered a beautiful site to live on.  I was able to bike to town to attend my classes and bus to work.  The route passed right by a co-op market where I was able to volunteer in exchange for their day old goods.  I explored how little I could utilize money or petrochemicals and live a very comfortable and soul enriching life.  I continued to study the work of Steiner and was introduced to biodynamic farming.  Visiting and volunteering on these farms opened my eyes to a deeper way of living in healthy relationship with the land and with others in supportive communities.  My inspiration then deepened as the botany program gained a new faculty member who was a Tarahumaran tribal member from northern Mexico.  He taught ethnobotany courses, often as field trips to the many tribal communities around Durango and I enrolled in every course he offered. 

 

In this time I was able to start working at an herb shop in town.  The owner taught her employees basic herbal knowledge and encouraged us to give advice to customers coming to shop.  This was both empowering and terrifying as I was just aware enough of how little I actually knew about the inner workings of the human body.  It was when a cancer patient came into the shop asking what herb he should take to help his laundry list of symptoms that I knew there had to be a better way to do healthcare.  

 

As fate would have it, Dr. Louise Edwards came to teach an inservice for the county home health workers where I kept connected to serve a few of my favorite clients.  She was a naturopathic doctor that blew my mind to hear her talk about herb-drug interactions and how we can assist the biochemistry of the liver with castor oil packs and more.  As I got to know her more over the coming months, I couldn't believe a profession of doctors existed that received the medical education as comprehensive as the standard medicine doctoral programs but made room to include natural medicine as well.  It was then I set my sights on attending the naturopathic medical school in Portland, Oregon.  

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My medical education was everything I'd hoped for.  Philosophy of healing courses that truly resonated with me, biochemistry and pathology courses that made my brain stretch while the manual therapy courses started to give me resources I could put to use.  At the time, the National College of Natural Medicine where I was attending school held a very unique program in Classical Chinese medicine.  After the first meeting with Heiner Fruehauf who founded the program, I knew this was an even deeper path of healing I needed to pursue.  This was available as a parallel dual degree program with the doctoral program in Naturopathic medicine and simultaneous participation in the Masters of Science in Oriental Medicine degree program as a 7 year combined graduate program.  

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In the midst of this educational journey, I was fortunate to meet Dr. Paul Kalnins.  He hosted Anthroposophical medicine study groups in his home and taught in the Chinese medicine program.  With my prior interest in Rudolf Steiner and experience with biodynamic farming, this was the perfect complement to the merging of East and West for my medical training.  Both in classes and clinical experience, I was guided by incredible experts in Naturopathic medicine, Chinese medicine and the blending of both systems with Anthroposophical medicine for 5 years.

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Once I'd finished my education, I joined the office of another mentor I worked with in Chinese medicine, David Berkshire.  He founded Kwan Yin Healing Arts in Portland, Oregon and offered me an opportunity to join his clinic and also mentor with him in 5-element Chinese medicine.  I joined all of the insurance panels and worked as a primary care doctor blending the many traditions I'd studied to address the health concerns of a very diverse population base.  As the clinic grew, we started hosting a study group to investigate the way the systems of healing overlap including Chinese medicine, homeopathy, Anthroposophical medicine and Naturopathic medicine.  This time served as a  powerful amalgamation of my training as our group continued to make discoveries aligning these incredible healing traditions.

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After several years working in the role of a primary care provider, my family decided it was time to depart the urban environment and seek out a new life with the goal of developing self-sufficiency on a small farm.  We moved to Colorado in 2011 just after my second daughter was born very near to where I had grown up.  

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We settled into Lyons, a small town on the way to Rocky Mountain national park yet near enough to my parents and the front range metropolis.  Here we started Stillwater as a home for my medical practice, a space for James' therapy practice and a natural medicine apothecary.  For 12 years we grew our shop and offered many community classes and events.  Throughout this time we'd been developing a small farm on Apple Valley as our home and farm to explore biodynamic farming practices to grow food and herbs.

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In 2023 we were able to transform our home to accommodate a private office where we now see our patients and clients in person or with remote visits around the world.  This merging is a dream come true, a space for people to truly step out of the chaos of the world, transform with the healing experiences they have and then reflect with the many elements and animal residents of the farm environment.  

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I am so grateful to have had the opportunities that led me to gather the resources I have to share with patients of all ages and stages of health and disease.  The combined wisdom of the many healing traditions blend in a beautiful way that can reflect profound healing transformations in the people I get to work with.  Together, we explore the patterns the body is presenting with the message the healing process is conveying to the individual.  This with acknowledgement of where a person is in their life journey and what influences are rising that need balance allow people to get to know themselves anew and honor their bodies changing needs. 

 

As each season passes, we have opportunities to activate the growth and regeneration that our bodies know how to do.  Yet so often people perpetuate patterns of self-harm and are caught in cycles that inhibit the regenerative process and create disease.  To confront this, we must tend to both the direct traumas that inhibit our growth and the generational trauma we carry in order to release the dis~ease of our time and experience our true nature of health and vitality.  Natural medicine resources are exactly the key to assist this profound healing journey.  Thus, each day I am humbled to be witness to the powerful healing transformations by patients share and develop continuously deeper trust that nature knows the way.  

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