My Story: from Theatre to Church to Spirit & Whimsy

I spent my early career at the Florida Repertory Theatre, managing the box office and loving every minute of being part of a professional theater community. When I was invited to be the Art Director for the summer camp program, I said yes mostly because the theater closed in the summer and I needed a paycheck. What I didn't expect was that working with those kids - ages five to seventeen, making costumes and props and performing full musicals - would be a complete revelation. I remember realizing with total clarity: this is what I'm supposed to be doing, I want to work with young people and their families for the rest of my life! It's also where I first discovered that I was, shall we say "sillier" than most of the adults around me. Interestingly, it turned out this wasn't a liability, but a gift. Something in that playfulness connected with kids in a way that felt almost effortless. I didn't have a name for it yet, but looking back, that's where my personal understanding of sacred silliness was born.

Life, as it does, intervened. After my son was born I experienced intense postpartum depression and anxiety, and the hours and rhythms of theater life simply couldn't coexist with a newborn. I had to walk away from work that had become central to my identity, and it was genuinely devastating. On the advice of my doctor, I went looking for a new community. I happened to know a few folks who attended a Unitarian Universalist congregation nearby, so my family decided to try it. We walked in and immediately felt at home - all of us. That's how I came to discover and love this life-saving faith, and eventually, how I became a professional religious educator.

My start in this work could be considered a crash course. Coming up through the congregation where I first served meant navigating a complete transformation of my relationships with people who had been my friends and support network. Suddenly I was wearing a professional hat - responsible for maintaining systems, enforcing boundaries, being careful about the appearance of favoritism - with no handbook for any of it. Discovering the Liberal Religious Educators Association (LREDA) and connecting with incredibly supportive and talented colleagues was what saved me. LREDA helped me realize I was a thread in a tapestry of religious professionals, lush with history and vibrant with passion for faith formation. It also gave me an enduring passion for supporting people who are new to this work, because I know firsthand how disorienting it can be to arrive at a calling you love and find yourself immediately in over your head.

It was at this first congregation that I learned a very vital skill: how to foster an abundance mindset and use resources creatively. With a modest budget, a small volunteer pool, and a community which was accustomed to centering adults more than children, I had to get deeply creative to build a nourishing program. I developed multigenerational approaches, brought youth empowerment into the structure of the program, and designed tools like the Intention Table - a hands-on activity space in the sanctuary tied to the theme of the worship service, open to anyone, that brought the whole congregation into contact with the work happening in religious education. It was unconventional in many ways, but it worked. And it taught me that constraints, when you lean into them rather than fight them, can be the mother of genuinely innovative programming.

I later moved north and served a congregation in Maryland for five years - adapting, reviving, and reimagining their newly named "Faith Formation Program." It was during this time that my daughter's struggles in school held up a mirror I hadn't expected. I saw so much of my younger self in her. Parenting her became an exercise in reparenting my own inner child, in grieving the ways my needs had gone unmet, and in recognizing a pattern I hadn't yet named in myself. I received my adult autism and ADHD diagnosis, and everything shifted. I became a loud advocate for assuming neurodivergence rather than neurotypicality - in program design, in classroom management, in the way we support our volunteers. After all, the accommodations we make for neurodivergent people don't subtract from the experience for anyone else; they make the community more whole.

It was toward the end of my time in Maryland that I took on a consulting engagement with the Unitarian Universalist Society of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, helping them imagine a way to revive their religious education program over the course of two years. That experience made clear to me that this - consulting, curriculum design, resource creation - was where my energy wanted to go next, to support those dedicating their time and energy to UU faith formation. Spirit & Whimsy became the vehicle for that work.

I still get my hands dirty every summer at the Southeastern Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute (SUUSI), where I direct children's programming from nursery through middle school. It keeps me grounded. It reminds me why all of this matters. And honestly, it's just really, really fun.

If any of what I've described sounds familiar - if you recognize your congregation, your program, or familiar challenges in any of it - I hope you've gleaned a glimmer of affirmation. This holy work will both challenge and nourish you; the people you serve will both inspire and confound you; and the formation of your own faith will likely take some turns you didn't expect. And hey, I'm right here, ready to put my brainstorming to your service, should you ever desire a consultant who insists you share a few laughs as you tackle challenges.