By sheer surprise, one evening while working at the Madison County Juvenile Center located in Anderson Indiana my life would be changed forever. It was around 9:00 pm and the other staff member had left for the night. That evening a thirteen-year-old girl tried to commit suicide. After cleaning her surface wounds on her wrist and trying to comfort her, I returned to the office to write-up the report. Since I was only 21 myself, I felt unequipped to help her. I could not understand her reasoning. She cut her wrist because the staff took away pictures of her pimp. She wanted to run away again back to Ohio and be with her pimp. How could a young girl become so disconnected from her family? As I began writing up the incident report to document her suicide attempt, I looked up and noticed several bibles on a shelf. Curiously, I opened one and began to read a few sentences. For a moment I sat in silence and began to pray, “Dear Heavenly Father please help me with your children. I do not know how to help them. I do not understand what they need.” Within moments after my prayer there was a knock on the door. This was unusual because the people only allowed to the center at night were the staff or the police. I was a little curious since it wasn’t time for a shift change and the police had not called to report that they were bringing someone out. I buzzed the intercom to see who was there. Over the intercom I heard a voice stating, "My name is Pastor Fields and I would like to speak with you about working with the children."

I think both Pastor Fields and I were astonished by the fact the bible was on the desk in the office and I had just prayed for the children. He said, “ I have passed this way many times and wanted to stopped to talk with someone. Tonight I was drawn to stop. Needless to say we became dear friends and he baptized me in a small creek. We both met resistance by the judge and staff as whether to allow a church to become involved in the children’s lives. The judge said they had allowed churches to come into the children’s lives and then the organization would leave. Children were left disillusioned and disappointed. Pastor Fields promised the judge he would continue his service to the children. Pastor Fields also counseled me on the loss of my mother. I had not seen my mother from the time I was 9 months old. Pastor Fields read and prayed with the poems I wrote about not knowing my mom. Through his prayer and work my mother and I were reunited within 6 months. This was astonishing. I was being shown the power of prayer and the Lord’s work. From that time I knew my mission in life was to help children heal.

I left Indiana on my own healing journey to meet my mother and to marry my husband. Somehow I was led away from Indiana and my experience with prayer. And yet my life kept leading me towards helping children. I spent several years studying traditional psychology while at the same time I was interested in how prayer works. I wanted to learn how to heal. My innocent prayer one night led me to studying with Barbara Ann Brennan, the author of" Hands of Light and Light Emerging". Since 1987 I have trained and taught for her school. I developed her Healing Science Department, which was responsible for writing all of the human energy field skills. I also served as Vice President and I am currently the Dean of Professional Studies. Two years ago I developed and taught a Brennan Integration Practitioner and Supervision program open to Advanced Education Students and teachers.

For the past couple of years, in mediation and prayer, I am shown that night in the Juvenile Center and my prayer to help the children. I know spirit is guiding me and wanting me to bring my work in a simple way to touch the hearts and spirits of parents and to help children.

At that instant, I was stunned, intrigued, and blessed by the effectiveness of prayer. I wanted to learn more about the healing power of prayer.

My education, teaching, and private practice for the past twenty years in traditional psychology and human energy field are the foundation upon my movement towards sharing this knowledge with parents and families. My love for the children of humanity arises from a deep need to heal myself and to pass on the knowledge, which has healed my family. In the beginning, the journey seemed somewhat mystical and yet very common. I could not find words to describe my experiences from either my family of origin or education.

I was not prepared for parenting and other adult responsibilities. The parenting books I read described the process of birthing and what to expect at each month or year during child development. Yet they did not include simple ways to understand and change the dynamics of my own personality and my family’s beliefs and images that would directly affect the psychological and emotional well being of my children. Throughout my classical psychological training, I read several books, which classified psychological disorders, theories of personality, family therapy, and child development. I followed a wave of psychological theories and application from the 1800’s until today.

In the 20th century, there are four main forces dominating the field of psychology-- behaviorism, psychoanalytic, humanistic, and transpersonal. Each of these forces has evolved over the past century to include many effective treatments used in the field today.

From reading a varied source of information on the emotional and psychological growth of a child, I realized using an eclectic approach was to be inclusive of the diversity of people and issues presented. Each theory gave me another lens to review family dynamics and personality disorders. Each model offers clear descriptions of unhealthy and dysfunctional patterns that affect the emotional and psychological development of children. I became eclectic in understanding human nature.

With all this knowledge, like most students, I would apply it to analyze my own family system. Sometimes, I would be elated to find answers and insights into my own psychological and emotional health. I came to understand that my emotional and mental well-being was based upon my primary relationship with my mother and father. Most theories indicated the basic relationship between the mother and child in the first years of life would set the stage for psychological well-being. Since, I was separated from my mother at the age of one, and raised by my father, many times I felt helpless in healing this loss. The emotional health of a child was based on the psychological health of the mother and very rarely included the father.

In the 1980’s the catchall term for describing my family was dysfunctional. All the popular literature reflected family systems theories, which were based in identifying dysfunctional patterns. Since my father had remarried five times, it looked like our family was a textbook case. How could my family’s dysfunctional tradition change? Would we continue to repeat the unconscious and conscious patterns? I identified and traced my father’s family’s consciousness that seemed to be at the root of my pain and lost sense of self. My search guided me to review family systems theories hopeing to find some understanding and relief from my pain.

While using the family system lens, the more I looked around most families could be classified as dysfunctional. The divorce rate was on the rise. Children were being left alone to take care of themselves. Even the families that looked perfect on the outside had difficulties behind closed doors. Alcoholism and drug abuse became a way out for many people to cope with their lost sense of self. For others, verbal and physical abuse became the normal life experience.

In the years of teaching at the Barbara Brennan School and in my private practice, I became accustomed to hearing the people’s stories. Everyone I met had some type of wounding to report from childhood. It didn’t matter whether they were young or old, rich or poor, raised by both parents, one parent, abandoned, or physically, emotionally or mentally abused. Each person reported some family secret or pattern that kept him or her from growing emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

With the maturity of the field of psychology, a new wave of psychological material arose and was reported by therapist around the world. The once unspoken secrets that held families and people hostage were being told by clients and reported by therapist.
More people began feeling comfortable going to a psychologist or counselor to seek help with their problems.

We had broken through the long held image that seeing a psychologist meant you were crazy and belonged in an institution. In the 1950’s women and men were institutionalized for breaking social norms. My mother was institutionalized for cheating on my father. Her children were taken from her and placed in my father’s custody. It wasn’t until the social revolution of the 1960’s and the movement towards closing mental hospitals and deinstitutionalization in the late 1980’s, that opened the door for many people to seek professional counseling without the threat of social stigma or possibly being institutionalized. New methods of treatment and healthcare were implemented to help institutionalized individuals become part of the community. The mass image held around the stigma of mental illness began to dissolve. As a result, there was a strong movement in the field of psychology towards self-development. Many people began seeking therapeutic counsel for self-growth and understanding. People were looking for meaning in their life.

Many people became interested in the fourth force in the field, Transpersonal Psychology. People were looking beyond their religion to find spiritual meaning in their lives. Many Transpersonal approaches began to emerge to meet the insatiable hunger for self-development and spiritual aliveness. From the mid 1980’s until now several complimentary healing approaches emerged out of the need presented by humanity. The acknowledgement and discovery of human energy field sparked many new age hands-on-healing treatments for both physical and psychological problems.