I shift stories.
When I was young, my dad hoped I’d become an artist — like his grandmother, whom he adored. I loved art. But first, I loved to dance. At sixteen I started a dance school and spent the next fourteen years teaching it. Then, at twenty-eight, with three kids in tow, I went off to college and earned a master’s degree in choreography from UCLA.
Instead of returning to the dance world, I set out to understand business — and myself. I took all kinds of jobs: some to learn how the world works, some simply to support my three children. Eventually I spent twenty years inside large financial firms as a Certified Financial Planner.
I enjoyed the work. But a stronger pull kept growing: I wanted to write, and to teach the ideas I’d developed in a course I called The Shift.
So I did.
I started teaching The Shift Course in 1992, and every book in The Shift Series grew out of that first class. Whether I’m writing fiction or non-fiction, I write with one intention: to shift our perception of what’s possible.
Since 1999 I’ve written perception-shifting blogs, and I send two free email series devoted to the same — The Daily Nudge and The Truth 4 Today, where I combine words and art. In a way, that finally fulfills my dad’s dream of me as an artist.
And I’m a coach — on what else? — helping people shift perception. These days I think of it as being a Restoryer: helping you notice the story you’re living, and choose a truer one.
As a child, I tried to tell everyone about the power of shifting perception. I learned that telling people rarely works — but showing them alternatives might. That’s what I hope to do with everything I make, whether I’m writing, coaching, or simply living my life.
I learned life the hard way. Some things worked, some didn’t, but all of it taught me. I’ve been married and divorced more than once, until I finally got marriage right. I’m a mother, grandmother, and stepmother. When I’m not working, you’ll find me reading, or in the garden in Northeast Ohio with my husband, Delbert Lee Piper Sr.