About Mee

I became the woman I was looking for.

Healing With Food

On the day I was born, a surgery left my intestine permanently damaged.

For most of my life, my body asked me to listen closely. Food became the language I learned to listen through, first as a way to care for myself, then as a source of steadiness and joy.

More than twenty years ago, that listening led me toward the microbiome. In my own kitchen, I learned how food could help my body feel more balanced. What began as necessity became devotion, then culinary school and allergy-conscious cooking.

Farm to Table

Years later, that work found a home on our ranch and farm when I opened The Pinewood Kitchen and Mercantile. For seven beautiful years, Pinewood was a true farm-to-table restaurant in the deepest sense of the phrase. The beef, pork, honey, vegetables, and even the mushrooms served on our plates were raised right there on the land. The seasons shaped the menu, and the farm itself was part of every meal.

It was a welcoming kitchen, the kind of place where everyone could sit down and feel at home. Long before it was common in our rural Southern county, we embraced food allergies, dietary needs, and the many ways bodies ask to be nourished differently.

We created keto meals for our diabetic diners, comforting soups for patrons making their way through chemotherapy, and dishes adapted for a wide range of dietary needs. We cooked for guests living with Alpha-gal tick allergy, for those with celiac disease, for vegans, and for the good old boys who came in for homemade sausage and biscuits. And all of it was down home Southern deliciousness, made with ingredients straight from the farm.

In a place where “special diets” were often misunderstood, we quietly made room for everyone.

Neighbors, travelers, and strangers gathered around those tables. There was laughter, long conversations, and the quiet kind of healing that happens when someone knows the food in front of them supports their body and will not hurt them.

Learning to cook for my own wellness, opened the door for me to cook for my community and then my loved ones when they needed me most.

Dreaming as Guidance

When I was a teenager, loss arrived like a sudden winter. Within three weeks, my mother, two of my closest friends, and my grandmother were gone. Grief drained the world of color, and I began searching for my way back to myself.

That search carried me to the wide desert of Santa Fe, where wise shaman women welcomed me into the quiet mystery of conscious dreaming.

Conscious dreaming is the practice of listening to dreams and working with them while asleep and while awake. It is a path of healing for the heart and spirit. Through it, we meet our fears, release the stories that bind us, and begin to imagine a life filled with light again.

Through dreamwork, I discovered that fear can soften, grief can open, and the future can be dreamed larger than the past. Along the way, I embraced many forms of healing. I worked deeply with a psychotherapist who honored both spirit and science. I filled journals with my thoughts and practiced yoga, meditation, and tai chi. Each practice slowly untangled the threads of sorrow and revealed new possibilities for my life.

Dreaming eventually led me to my husband, Lee. In many ways, we dreamed our way to one another. Together we built a life rich in experience and wonder, from the jungles of Mexico to Sausalito, Malibu, and the quiet beauty of our ranch in Tennessee.

Together with Veronica and Alberto Hernández, Lee and I helped bring The Dreaming House Teotihuacán into being. It is a sacred place where people gather to remember the power of dreaming.

Today, I continue that living tradition. I guide groups through the pyramids of Teotihuacán and share the practice of conscious dreaming at The Dreaming House, helping others remember that our lives can be dreamed into reality.

Whole Person Healing and Resilience

When I married Lee, he owned The Recovery Ranch in Tennessee, a place devoted to deep healing and renewal. Together, we went on to build and steward two more centers: The Canyon in Malibu and The Integrative Life Center in Nashville. Lee carried the public vision. I helped hold the work itself - supporting the people, the mission, and the belief that true recovery must embrace the whole person: body, mind, and spirit.

Along the way, I witnessed thousands of people reclaim their lives. Their courage taught me that healing is rarely a straight line, and that beginning again is its own kind of strength.

I also became a mother of two daughters, and more recently, a widow.

Loss and reinvention have walked beside me all my life.

I know what it feels like to "fall apart" and what it takes to create yourself again, both in the world and in the kitchen.

My late husband, Lee. Cooking for him taught me about riding with someone until the end.

My story is full of those bits of loss and resilience, food and dreams, spirit and humor. They're what brought me here, and they're what I now share with you.

I've learned that The Juicie Bits of life are rarely perfect.

They're the golden scraps at the bottom of the pan - the tender truths and messy moments that make us who we are.

All of these experiences with food, dreaming, healing, loss, and love are what I call The Juicie Bits.

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