“ Art springs out of the very stuff that life is made of. ” — Willa Cather 

I was born, post WW II into a foreign service family and began traveling at the age of four. Over the next ten years, we lived in London, Paris and Madrid. As an only child what I carried with me was a love of reading and an ability to adapt to just about anything.

I graduated from Holton Arms School for Girls in 1964, the beginning of the 60s. After tuning in, turning on and dropping out of the University of Colorado, I traveled to India where, by some amazing serendipity, my parents were stationed in Calcutta. From 1967-1968, I worked with Mother Teresa, taught English at a Tibetan refugee camp and traveled throughout the mountains of Northern India, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan, and was introduced to the culture of Tibetan Buddhism. Two years later, while a student at the London Film School, I began meditating and on a trip to the US in 1972, I met Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche who became my Buddhist teacher.

From 1975-85 I was a member of Centre Productions, a film company created by Trungpa Rinpoche based in Boulder, Colorado. During those years I directed two films, I married and had two children. In 1985, I started my own film company, Chariot Productions, and for the next 32 years I produced and directed, wrote, edited and distributed documentary and educational films and videos on a wide range of subjects ––addiction, gang life, prisons, AIDS and Native American life. You can find links to many of the films on the Film Page.

In 2005, I accompanied Tsoknyi Rinpoche with a small film crew on a remarkable journey in search of nunneries in a remote mountainous region of Eastern Tibet.  The award-winning feature documentary Blessings: The Tsoknyi Nangchen Nuns of Tibet was released in 2008 followed by When the Iron Bird Flies: Tibetan Buddhism Arrives in the West in the fall of 2012. In 2013 I was ordained as a Buddhist teacher by Anam Thubten.

Over the years I have written screenplays, narrations, poems, and journals.  In 2017, I began writing full time and discovered a rich world of memories and observations to explore through poetry and creative non-fiction. I published three books of poems and started teaching weekend and day-long Writing and Contemplation workshops.

In 2019 I began writing a memoir that had been gestating in me for almost twenty years. Writing the book was all consuming––painful and joyful, arduous and exciting and everything in between. 

In spring of 2023, A Tree With My Name On It: Finding a Way Home was finished.  At the end of the year, it was selected for publication by Bold Story Press, a women’s hybrid publisher. It is scheduled to be released on October 16, 2024. Read more about the memoir here.