About Marie
I’m a Certified Focusing Professional and a mindfulness practitioner with over 25 years of experience. I practice mindfulness in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay), and received a Dharma name from Thay in 2003.
Marie’s Introduction to Caregiving
Like many, I had a sudden introduction to caregiving. At age 30, I became a caregiver overnight when my father, a single man in New Zealand, suffered a massive brain hemorrhage from which he never recovered. I spent a year trying to make him better, somehow believing that if I dedicated time and energy to his health, he would become his former self. It didn’t work, and I burnt out.
While this equation didn’t work, it is common amongst family caregivers. Over the next thirty years, I witnessed caregivers giving of themselves, rarely to themselves, and suffering the consequences. Research bears this out: caregiving often takes a severe toll on the emotional and physical well being of caregivers.
For most of this time, I worked on international poverty, mostly in Sub Saharan Africa. I specialized in listening to clients, yet I wasn’t able to listen within. In 1999, I took a mindfulness class, found it surprisingly helpful and began weaving mindfulness practices into my daily life, including professional work and parenting young children. Since then, I’ve deepened and broadened my practice, learning trauma-informed mindfulness, cultural healing, and Inner Relationship Focusing—an embodied awareness practice that helps people heal by connecting to the wisdom of their bodies.
My approach draws from this lived experience and is tailored to the unique challenges that caregivers face.
I offer practical tools that caregivers can use at different stages in the arc of caregiving—from planning mode (if there is one) to full blown crisis and beyond.
I hold an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Certificate in Inner Relationship Focusing, and practice mindfulness in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay), having receivedreceiving a Dharma name from Thayhim in 2003. Over the years, I’ve been active in several mindfulness communities, such as Still Water Practice Center and the Opening Heart Mindfulness Community, where I chaired the board for many years.
Today, I live in rural Maryland, where I co-founded Clear Skies Mindfulness Community (website coming soon!) I offer classes, retreats and one-on-one sessions that help caregivers learn ways to better care for themselves and those they love.
My Passion for empowering caregivers
I am passionate about caregivers because caregiving matters: it makes a huge difference in the lives of those being cared for and of those giving the care. It’s fulfilling, it’s hard and it’s largely invisible.
I came to this work through my own experience caring for others, both in my professional and personal worlds. Despite getting physically and emotionally wiped out, multiple times, I kept on keeping on. This approach was notNot logical or healthy, yet painfully common amongst caregivers.
These experiences sparked my curiosity:
why is it so difficult for caregivers to include ourselves in the circle of those for whom we care? What tools and circumstances might make it easier for us to care for ourselves? How could these tools be introduced and adapted by people who have difficulty finding time for their “to do” list, let alone, themselves?
Over the last 25 years, alongside my regular job, I studied a range of mindfulness-based practices and began offering group classes, retreats and one-on-one sessions. Many students were also caregivers, and I realized that we caregivers have challenges that are unique. We need tools we can draw on at different junctures in the arc of caregiving - from planning mode (if there is one) to full blown crisis to the aftermath.
I decided to leave the corporate world and dedicate myself to helping caregivers take better care of themselves and those they for whom they care. I built a toolkit of awareness-based practices so that caregivers could experiment, identify those that work best for their unique circumstances and learn how to integrate these practices into their daily lives.
