ABOUT
“Holding our life’s stories close to our hearts reflects our humanity.
Holding them courageously to the light for the sake of humanity reveals our divinity.”
ACTRESS • WRITER • AUTHOR • STORYTELLER
Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, I wrote stories in my diary to make sense of life in a city harboring a dark and ugly history. At age 7, I began studying and performing with Birmingham Summerfest Theater. Through acting, I learned that silencing stories destroys us, while illuminating the truth heals us.
Shortly after 9/11, I packed up a U-Haul with my cat Baxter and moved to Manhattan. I had watched the towers fall on TV from my living room in Birmingham, and while many understandably left the city afterward, I started making plans to move there. I knew that whatever happened next as the city rose up off its knees, I wanted to be reborn with it.
I continued my love of story telling through an advertising career, a social justice career, writing my own one-act play about "coming out" produced off-off Broadway, getting published with 4 non-fiction books, and appearing as a live, on-air media commentator on headlines and popular culture for national media like NPR, CNN HLN, MSNBC, and FOX.
I earned a Master of Divinity with a political science focus at Columbia University, exploring how diverse cultures over millennia have explained our common experiences of grief, fear, loss, faith, hope and love. In 2015, I wrote Femmevangelical, revealing long-silenced stories of how ancient religious narratives still enmeshed in American culture and politics oppress women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, immigrants and people living in poverty and the industrial prison system, ultimately denying us all our humanity and divine purpose.
I’ve contributed stories on these issues to Variety, TIME, The Hill, Huffington Post, and more. I even trained Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures staff on story telling to highlight their global justice work. Later, I opened Osha Ruah : Shining Spirit, a yoga, meditation, reiki and trauma healing practice that helps actors and other humans reclaim their voice, live fully in their body, and be their most authentic self.
Now a mom, my greatest accomplishment has been fighting for my now 5 year old daughter, who was born with a rare genetic anomaly. She is thriving today. I bring all of my experiences and pieces of myself to my acting, including the abiding belief that stories change people and with them, the world.
Acting and writing are about non-judgmentally exploring the complex human condition, so that we may realize the greater story in which every one of us has a crucial part to play.