Meet Sheila

The first knots in my origin story were ancestral.  When my maternal grandmother was three months old, she lost her mother. When my mother was 15, she lost her mother. My mother lost two pregnancies before my older sister was born.  On my father’s side my paternal great grandmother was a midwife.  That part of my story may be the reason I  became a Labor and Delivery nurse and DONA birth doula and why I became increasingly interested in the spirituality of childbirth and the preborn and newborn’s origin story. 

A spontaneous birth memory, during Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy training, led me to certification as an APPPAH approved  Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology Educator.  At the same time I was enrolled in APPPAH’s program, I was studying to become a spiritual director.  It was at a monastery in Canada that Lauren Artress led a labyrinth walk for the students.   While waiting to enter the labyrinth, I saw the petals of the center rose as six Cardinal Movements of Birth the prenate that enables birth.  Developed that idea further I discovered four separate geometric patterns in the Chartres labyrinth and created CHARTres 4 PEACE LAByrinth™ nested puzzle.

Having studied embryologist Jaap van der Wal’s embryosophical interpretation of embryonic behavior as essentially spiritual movements that were telling us something about humankind, I began applying those same wayfinding behaviors toward completing a BA in Health Arts and Science, at age 63. Veriditas Labyrinth Facilitator and Lake Erie Institute Ecotherapy certifications followed some years later.  In 2019 I made my first trip to Europe to celebrate our 51st wedding anniversary.  While there, I studied with Ubiquity University and I walked Chartres Labyrinth during a special evening ceremony.  I wanted to see if I could make out the Seat of Wisdom stained glass window at the very top of the central lancet window above the high altar.  The one where the Madonna and Child are depicted as aged.  I show a photos of this and more in my Labyrinth Pathways article published by The Labyrinth Society.