My primary passion and focus is spreading several practical and relationship-centered ideas. Power can and must be used with compassion. Power, as simply the ability to have an effect or to have influence, can be used to heal past harm, resolve conflicts, repair relationships, and evolve situations. Ethics, in its broadest and richest context, is the right use of power and influence. In addition to good intentions, there are theories and skills involved in learning more and more about using the power that you already have wisely and well. As Founder and Director of the Right Use of Power™ Institute, I have been designing, developing, and teaching this approach since 1994. Two books explore these ideas in depth: Right Use of Power: The Heart of Ethics is a resource for people in the helping professionals. Living in the Power Zone: How Right Use of Power Can Transform Your Relationships, written with my husband, Dr. Reynold Ruslan Feldman, delves into right use of power for everyone. Internationally, I offer offer Right Use of Power™ workshops and train others to present their own Right Use of Power™ programs, and develop e-courses and other materials. I also serve as a consultant in ethics and power issues for individuals, groups, and organizations. In 2017, I earned the degree of Doctor of Psychosocial Intervention (D.P.I.) from the Parkmore Institute. I began studying the Hakomi Method of Body-Centered Psychotherapy with Ron Kurtz and his senior trainers in 1981. Being first the administrative director of the newly-founded Hakomi Institute and then a Certified Hakomi Trainer and Therapist, Hakomi has been a rich and deep career journey for which I am grateful beyond words. I’ve had the privilege of teaching in 26 Hakomi Trainings and dozens of workshops around the globe that have brought experiences of hurt, resilience, beauty, and healing love with many cultures, groups, and individuals. I continue to work for the Hakomi Institute as a Hakomi Therapist, Hakomi Trainer, Hakomi Journal managing editor, and consultant to the Hakomi International Ethics Committee. Many, many of the Right Use of Power™ themes and experiential processes are inspired and derived from Hakomi principles and teaching methods. My life journey of commitment to loving and serving and helping consciousness evolve has been rich and diverse. Growing up in Wethersfield, Connecticut in a family with two loving parents, Margaret and Robbins Barstow, and two wonderful brothers, David and Daniel, gave me a good foundation. In 1954, our family, amazingly, won a national contest in which the prize was a trip to Disneyland! My Dad was an innovative and creative home-movie maker and made a half-hour film of our trip that has won enough accolades that it is in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress. You can see it yourself here: Robbins Barstow Disneyland Dream. I remember my Grandmother Vanderbeek, who was for many years a teacher in a girls’ school in China, telling us fairy tales in Chinese, acting them out so that we could follow the story. I remember going to Girl Scout camp and being confounded about why one of the girls in my tent would steal comic books from other girls. I was part of the “blue eyes club” in elementary school and learned first -hand about the pain of exclusion since my best friend, Cheryl, had brown eyes. I wrote and printed the Girl Scout Newsletter using a mimeograph machine. In high school, I read Kahlil Gibran and Winnie-the-Pooh. My youth group went on a work-week to Puerto Rico and experienced poverty and playfulness. I was the Recording Secretary for the State Pilgrim Fellowship of the United Church that gave me my first opportunity to engage in deep conversation with like-minded souls about things that really mattered. My family had the unique experience of car-camping across America seeing historic sites and getting a felt understanding of our history and our amazing geography. Most memorable were the mountains and the desert and the shock and pain of seeing the separate facilities for “negroes” in the South. In five summers, we visited all 48 continental states. Earlham College, a Quaker school in Richmond, Indiana was a great choice for me since the foundational focus of education there was on living a good and worthwhile life. I made life-long friends, wrote poetry, attended cultural events, studied hard, engaged with big and expansive ideas, became a Quaker, and loved it all. After college, I taught elementary school in the inner city of Hartford, CT. The summer of 1967 brought me to Boston where I worked as a secretary for the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ and encountered the counter-culture on Boston Common and through my uncle, Paul Barstow, who was the head of the Theatre Department of Wellesley College and a remarkable and interesting man. My horizons broadened and I joined a professional commune in Somerville called Summit Ave. We took a four-apartment building and remodeled it into a 13- bedroom home with beautiful big kitchen and dining room table seating 14 plus. I got a Masters’ Degree in Counseling and Education and made and sold candles in Harvard Square for a living. We, hippies, explored drugs, spirituality, alternative everything and thought we could make the world peaceful. It was a marvelously creative and pattern-breaking time. On May 16, 1971, we were the cover story of the Boston Globe Sunday magazine. This four-year experience sparked a life-long choice for communal living that continues in my home in Boulder, Colorado. At age 30, my friend Marni Harmony and I moved to Denver, Colorado. Over my eight years in Denver, I played and worked in lots of arenas: elementary school teaching, secretarial work, volunteering at the Women’s Book Store, being a calligrapher and massage therapist, and teaching a variety of courses at Denver Free University. I became a remodeling carpenter, learning a skill I knew nothing about from Barney Aldrich, and loved the sense of physical and visual accomplishment that were part of every work day. These skills are continually of value and pleasure as a home-owner. I had a seven-year marriage to Tom Daly and helped raise his two children, Eric and Shawna. By 1981, we had moved to Boulder, Colorado and I settled into my life-career choice to be a psychotherapist and work with the Hakomi Institute. This was a time of great learning, emotional growth, and the development of deep and strong collegial relationships. Simultaneously, I was studying shamanism with Elizabeth Cogburn and growing the Earth Song Ceremonial Community. A group of 10 of us, calling ourselves “Weavers”, conducted ritual Moon Dances and Solstice and Equinox Dances that included drumming and a kind of trance-dancing. More about this process is in an article I wrote: Chapter 16 of The Nature and Function of Rituals: Fire from Heaven, edited by Ruth-Inge Heinze. The ten Weavers rigorously taught ourselves leadership skills and the art of integrating consensus and hierarchy, circle and line energies, in ways that stay collaborative. We were good teachers to each other. My interest in ritual led me on two very special trips led by James Harvey to the Australian outback where we stayed and developed relationships with Aboriginals and their land and ceremonies on a remote outback station. An Aboriginal painting of three fish now graces my kitchen. The seven-bedroom home that I bought in Boulder with my friend Amina Knowlan was a happy and meaningful place to spend 24 years as a single woman living in community. This house, now mine, has been home and place of healing, growth, and companionship for some 66 people since 1985. It works and has given and taught me a lot about what makes for successful group life. In 2009, my love, Ren Feldman, suddenly appeared and we were married a year later. He is an endearing and wonderful companion in travels, writing, eldering, spiritual growth, and general sweetness. We enjoying living in my house and making a home with two other roommates. Treasured adventures include six months spent in Central Borneo teaching in a little bilingual school, Bina Cita Utama, walking the Camino with Ren, and two weeks living with a Subud family (Laura Duranas) in Havana, Cuba. My spiritual life has deep roots and several paths—United Church of Christ, Quakerism, Shamanic, Kabbalah, Noetic Science, Buddhism, Subud, Episcopal—all of which have been and are worthy and enriching. Although I have no birth children, I, and now Ren and I, are blessed with some amazing children, step-children, and god-children: Tom Daly’s children Eric (and wife Amy) and Shawna (and husband Steve), Ren’s children, Marianna (and husband Harper) and Christine (and husband Richard), god-daughters Robyn Knowlan and Batia Rose Wilson, and granddaughters Sarah Levine, daughter of Marianna and Harper, Leila Claire Daly, daughter of Eric and Amy, Emma Aguilera, daughter of Right Use of Power™ Institute partner Amanda Aguilera, and Madelyn, daughter of Robyn and her husband Matt Cronin. Ren and I also lead an informal mentoring group for young women called Bright Stars. Each month, we bring together these women and an elder woman mentor who shares her life and wisdom and inspires rich conversation. As I move into creative and intentional eldering, I bring with me wisdom from my lifelong passions of Hakomi Mindful Somatic Therapy, Right Use of Power™, group life, family, travel, and spiritual growth. What a sweet and lovely thing to have a place to write my life story to be read by family, friends, and strangers. Thank you for giving this your attention.