About Beth
My “story” is presented here in two different versions. The Short Version is long on facts emphasizing jobs and school, but short on anecdotes. The Long Version mixes fact, fiction and introspection in what I hope is an engaging personal essay, entitled, “There’s No Place Like Home.”
The Short Version
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
“It’s all in the day’s work”
Avocation Meets Vocation
Beth is living her dream and excited to bring her lifelong passions into a unique practice in the healing arts. As a Brennan Healing Science Practitioner and a Massage Therapist, she weaves the threads of hands-on energy healing, bodywork, teaching and writing into a vibrant tapestry.
For the last six years, she has been a freelance writer, who stumbled into writing as a way to process grief. She had her first essays about life in post-911 Washington D.C. published in anniversary editions of The Voice of the Hill and The Leader Herald. A life-long love affair with the movies spawned a paying gig as The Voice’s Armchair Movie Reviewer and since then she has evolved into an award-winning film critic for The Washington Window, the newspaper serving the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. Her non-fiction essays, film reviews and vignettes about the vagaries of life have also been published in The Washington Post, The Orlando Sentinel, and The Senior Beacon.
Most of her previous career has been devoted to education and human resources management (see the following essay, There’s No Place Like Home, for other career choices gone awry). As a special educator, she taught and tutored kids and adults with learning disabilities at the prestigious Lab School of Washington and The Kingsbury Center. She also survived (barely) her public school experience in the Prince George’s County public school system as a middle school special education mathematics teacher. Prior to teaching, Beth was the Director of Personnel at Chestnut Lodge, a psychiatric hospital in Rockville, MD, as well as the Plant Personnel Manager and Manager of Employment and Equal Employment Opportunity at The Washington Post.
“Learning is but an adjunct to ourself”
“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books”
A Love Affair with Learning
- Diploma, Advanced Studies Program in Brennan Integration Work
- Diploma in Massage Therapy and Hydrotherapy, Space Coast Health Institute, Valedictorian
- Diploma, Barbara Brennan School of Healing
- M.S., Special Education, The Johns Hopkins University, 4.0 G.P.A.
- Reiki (Usui tradition), The Center for Integrative Medicine, The George Washington University
- M.B.A., Personnel, The George Washington University
- B.A., History, Hood College, Hood Scholar, Convocation Honors, Dean’s List
The Long Version
There’s No Place Like Home
The beaver is my Native American totem. I’ve always felt faintly embarrassed about this and longed for a sexier guide like the wolf or the falcon. Howling at the moon or soaring through the heavens seems much cooler than building dams with big, buck teeth. But, the truth is, the industrious beaver fits me. I too am a hard worker and while that label has plagued me all of my life, there’s one particular beaverish quality I’ve always admired—the beaver, against all odds, despite the inevitable natural disasters, relentlessly builds a home.
But, first things first and with me, that’s work. Hard work, although familiar and as comforting as the frayed piece of pink satin I used to stroke my face when I sucked my thumb as a toddler, nearly killed me. Here’s where it’s tempting to credit Brennan Healing Science with saving my life. And, maybe it ultimately did, but that’s getting ahead of the story. And, there’s always a story, isn’t there?
I was a sensitive kid who grew into a sensitive teenager who grew into a sensitive adult. Was I praised for this sensitivity? Perhaps, but that’s not what I recall. Correction: My mother did often mention my “active imagination,” especially in the context of vivid (and often harrowing) nightmares. But, what I remember is the criticism.
And as a kid, with the understanding of a kid, I did what kids do. I internalized the criticism and stifled my sensitivity. I adopted a pattern, which I now see as a defense, of trying to be perfect, a no-win strategy that exacts a high toll on its victims.
Like a puppy desperate to please, I earned academic accolades. The upside of the defense (and there’s always an upside, otherwise why would we do it?) is that I have boundless curiosity. I love learning. But, the downside, as is the case with most defenses, is that they don’t really work very well in the long-term.
But, for many years, my quest for perfection sent me on provocative journeys. School was a sanctuary that led to degrees that led to some “interesting” career choices. A Bachelor’s in History trained me to think, but left me without specific business skills, so I gravitated to the administrative aide grave yard and in one tremendously misguided foray, into the world of sales – selling railroad ties, (I kid you not) – a job that begs to be listed on the jacket of a best-selling novel.
After being fired from one of those soul-sucking jobs, I serendipitously found myself working in the personnel office of Chestnut Lodge, a psychiatric hospital in Rockville, MD. My boss took a liking to me, which no, did not lead to an affair, but to more school (sorry). This was back when organizations actually still spent money on their employees to advance their skills. So, in my 20’s, with their generously-financed Master’s degree in Business Administration, I found myself (with some incredulity) managing the personnel department, hiring nurses and psych techs to care for the chronically schizophrenic patients who long ago abandoned this reality and rarely returned.
I had stumbled on something I was good at – personnel work, later saddled with the more mechanical label, human resources (HR). But, regardless of the name, the field required the ability to quickly read people, establish trust and maintain confidentiality. I left The Lodge, for The Washington Post (I used to say I left one "nut house" for another) and continued in HR for nearly 17 years.
This begins my phase of work as exhilarating and fun. The Post was stocked with whip-smart people and I had the great, good fortune to work for a terrific boss or two, who gave me free rein (well, almost). Like a cat with spilled milk, I lapped up the heady brew of collegiality and independence for a number of years—until I didn’t. With the benefit of hindsight (one of the many advantages of aging), I see that it had nothing to do with the Post; it was me. I was still invested in my “story,” still striving to be perfect, and the cracks were starting to show.
My path to whatever enlightenment I’ve realized has mostly come from suffering. In the midst of considerable mental, emotional, physical and spiritual angst, the Universe further upped the ante. On May 5, 1989, violent thunderstorms dumped record rainfall into the Little Gunpowder River in Baltimore, MD, which swept my cousin, Marjorie, away in a freak riding accident. Her death tore a hole in my heart that took years to scab over.
Heartache is a great motivator for change. Already teetering on burn-out, I made the decision to work in the low-stress field of education (my faulty wiring is exposed). I bid corporate America adieu to do what I often do in times of uncertainty – I returned to school – to become a teacher. For the next decade, I taught kids and adults with learning “disabilities” in a variety of public and private settings, a career that gave me enough colorful anecdotes to last a lifetime.
This hard worker was probably destined to flame out fairly young. But, still it took time. My burn-out was a stealthy thief that stole sound sleep, kicked up anxiety, and twisted my guts into shapes guts should never assume.
Thus began the quest to find a “cure.”
Maybe miracles exist – in fact, I’m quite sure that they do, especially if we broaden our idea of what constitutes a “miracle,” but my journey back to health was not instantaneous or swift. Instead it’s been a multi-year odyssey of experimenting with different ingredients: the therapy piece, the exercise piece, the conventional medicine piece, the meditation piece, the alternative medicine piece, the complementary practices piece, to find just the right mix. And, in the process, I’ve scorched a lot of chocolate chip cookies.
But, just about the time I decided to give up baking and resigned myself to feeling lousy the rest of my life, my “miracle” happened.
Here’s the story: One day I picked up an issue of Body + Soul and started reading an article about a woman who could tune violins from a distance. Turns out she was a graduate of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing. Meant nothing to me but an Internet search piqued my interest enough to track down a Brennan Healing Science graduate nearby and schedule an appointment with her. And, this woman, this gifted healer, did something no one had ever done for me before – she saw my perfection, the wholeness of my soul. She saw my “true” self buried under decades of defense and beyond the false façade I presented — and in that moment, that miraculous moment, I knew I’d come home.