From an early age I have felt more comfortable out of doors than in buildings. I was raised in a Christian family; my father was an Anglican Minister, and I was educated in an Anglican Convent boarding school. I accepted all I was taught without question, and did not really connect religion with Nature. But I was spiritually drawn to the natural world. Biology was my favourite subject, and I loved messing about in ponds in the holidays, bringing tadpoles and caterpillars home to watch as they developed into beautiful creatures. There were chrysalides hanging from the ceilings, and baby frogs were found in the basement, having migrated from the playroom. These days out of doors became my contemplative times, when I would work through problems I had with family and friends, and come to terms with the emotional ups and downs of puberty. It was then that I started to write a journal. Expressing myself on paper was always easier for me than the spoken word, and my innermost secrets and thoughts could be spilt out onto the page where nobody could see them unless I wished it.

After I had been wandering for nearly 25 years in the wilderness without a personal spirituality, Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics piqued my interest in the relationship between science and spirituality. Subsequently, I attended a week's seminar with Fritjof at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. This experience was the beginning of a gradual awakening and led me to a whole new world of thought and experience through the doorway of his next book, The Turning Point. I can still feel shockwaves of the "Aha!" as I turned a page and first read about the Gaia Hypothesis. Yes, yes; a living planet became the hub of so many connecting spokes.  Of course, this explained why I had always felt so fascinated when standing near and looking at massive stone formations and clouds, listening to bird song, talking to trees and especially my childhood farm experience.

I grew up in a steel town in Ohio, where industry rather than Nature played a huge role.  I also existed in a very strict Byzantine Catholic environment, where I was sent to a Catholic girls’ school which was equally strict, and upon graduation I got married young, and worked as a secretary, and then later became a nurse.  It seemed that even during my young adult years I was oblivious of the importance Nature should play in my life.  As a result, the jobs I took and the religions I followed seemed to lack something for me, but I still did not realize what that might be.