Meet Mercy - Leadership with Mercy

MEET MERCY

A life of the unexpected. Each episode of my quiet life dissolves into another unknown.

I have lived many lives and straddled worlds. Raised in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont on Main Street, my family values were a cocktail of my mother’s love of the city, my father’s Ivy League escape to be a “kindly country physician”, my grandmother’s English Victorian mores and my grandfather’s European liberal intellect. We straddled the urbane summer population to serve in a proud local community, always as outsiders. I first discovered the vagaries of social status when I arrived at an elite girl’s boarding school.

When I returned home, nothing was as it had seemed to be.

I shed my first layer of identity as a top student, math major, skier and runner when I defaulted to a midwestern, albeit highly selective, college campus. My new passion was modern dance. I left pre-med for English literature. I discovered my passion for exploring the differences and similarities in American regional cultures in Wyoming, Arizona, Minnesota, New York City and Los Angeles. On what seemed an itinerant path, I pursued a sequence of career interests alongside a householder commitment to spirituality. I worked on a statewide nonprofit board of directors, managed an HEW research audit, copywrote at BusinessWeek magazine for an executive development program, managed the office of an ambitious psychoanalyst and conducted institutional research alongside waitressing, medical assisting and secretarial work.

At each turn, I was learning skills while adapting to failed expectations.

After a decade of uncertainty, my path and my purpose crystallized. My first marriage to a fellow meditator was an adaptation to the dissolution of my parents’ marriage. In Los Angeles, I entered my first professional career of psychotherapy alongside motherhood. However, spiritual practices and marriages are not a life insurance policy. A divorce, single parenthood, a troubled relationship and returning to my hometown pared down my reliance on certainty. Faced with my intractable role as the eldest in my family, I had the great fortune to discover Bowen Family Systems Theory and a mentor in Ann Bunting, Ph.D. This wide-ranging limitless perspective continues to feed my intellectual and clinical curiosity 30 years later. It led me on a path of gaining skills, strength and courage to tackle my own place in my family. Bowen Theory has been an invaluable tool as my career expanded into workplace consulting and neurofeedback training. Soon I embarked on a second marriage in a rich social, professional and community life.

My values had been forged by the chain of losses and re-evaluations of my parents’ expectations for me, their divorce, my divorce and leaving Los Angeles for my hometown. Each change brought a new life, with hard-earned gains and fewer expectations for certain outcomes.

I knew in an instant my hard-earned life was gone again when I accidentally discovered an irreconcilable difference with my second husband. I loved my life. Yes,
I know I am more than my lifestyle. My professional home also suffered a divorce. My youngest child
left home. In large and small ways, my life was pared down and rearranged. And not without some personal experimentation and turmoil.

Yet, I remained calm and clear-minded that I was facing another change into the unknown.

I know what it is to lose all bearings and to find one’s way without knowing the destination.

I know what it is to lose all bearings and to find one’s way without knowing the destination. I am blessed in many ways and my spiritual life has blossomed. My identity has unraveled. Few beliefs remain to buoy me.

At the same time, I am more sure of myself.

Does this sound like you?

You need someone to see what you can’t see.
The systems of analysis you have used in the past are missing something.
You are seeking elusive patterns and untapped reserves that are not obvious to you.
You will know when you have found what you are seeking.

With clients I channel my knowledge of complex social systems, neurophysiology, sociology, psychology and spiritual grounding to listen with deep attention to the confounding challenges unique to each individual. I bring clarity and a wealth of possibility to each dilemma.

I don’t have the answers for you, or a technique or new trick to teach you, however, I can shine a light at the end of your tunnel.

When I come up against challenging situations at work and in my family, Mercy has always has practical, positive suggestions for how I can position myself differently in my relationships. I find her ideas very effective.

She does not give me the answers to my problems, but better yet, guides me to help me uncover the solutions that I overlook when overwhelmed with the situation at hand.

This has helped me to become a better listener, leader, mentor, and friend.

Mercy is a leadership consultant who inspires leaders to lead themselves through relationship challenges. She inspires people to step beyond their roles as employees, managers, administrators and parents and re-discover their unique gifts with a renewed sense of purpose.

A life of the unexpected. Each episode of my quiet life dissolves into another unknown.

I know what it is to lose all bearings and to find one’s way without knowing the destination.

Does this sound like you?

I don’t have the answers for you, or a technique or new trick to teach you, however, I can shine a light at the end of your tunnel.

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