Your story is a powerful tool.
This has been my guiding principle for 40 years now, and inspires the work I do.
Our world is calling us to use our individual and combined wisdom to co-create positive change through our thinking, our choices, and our connections with each other.
We must start by getting clear on the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
As both the listener and the storyteller, we have an opportunity to find meaning in our experiences and frame them in a way that supports our own growth and resilience.
This is not a typical ¨About¨ page.
It´s longer and way more personal.
I share my big ol' skimmable story here as an example of the power of narrative shifts
and post-grief optimism.
*WARNING: tough life challenges ahead.
Loss, change, and trauma
I was adopted at two days old. My parents divorced when I was four. (When my father told my mother he was ¨homosexual,¨ she had to look it up in the dictionary.)
We moved to Oregon to live with my mother´s parents. Six months later, my grandfather died suddenly while mowing the lawn. My grandmother (primary caregiver) spiraled into early dementia, and attempted to kill me - twice. (She believed I had brought bad luck to the family.)
My father attempted to kidnap my two brothers and me, resulting in a ban on visitation for five years.
My mother remarried to a divorced man with four children. We moved into a garage we built in rural Oregon.
Sexual abuse began immediately. I had just turned 10.
Me at age 10.
The garage where we lived in Gaston, Oregon, 1970-1975
Like my classmates, I worked in the fields (before the minimum age was 12), spending my summers and fall afternoons harvesting (strawberries, beans, cucumbers, prunes, filberts, and more) and hoeing (long rows of onions, our town´s top crop.)
Way before we recognized the risks, I was exposed to now-banned cancer-causing pesticides and herbicides that left a green residue on my skin each day.
At 15, I was the sole survivor of a tragic car accident. Because it happened miles from my town, both my parents and the police insisted that talking about it would create problems for me. They made me promise not to say a word about it.
I didn´t tell anyone - not even my siblings - for years.
Silently reeling from survivor guilt, I fell into a deep depression.
Someone reached out to teach me to meditate. But it was hard to sit with such intense emotions and suicidal thoughts.
So, I created a way to turn mindfulness into a fun game I couldn´t wait to play. I used everyday cues to remind me to be present.
I did it all day long. I got good at it. And it saved me.
But I continued to engage in self sabotage.
I developed an eating disorder, and was suspended from high school for showing up drunk at the homecoming dance when I was the homecoming queen.
Smiling through the pain.
At 17, I met my birth mother.
She had become pregnant at 21 after falling in love with an older married man who lied to her about being separated (his wife and son were planning on joining him once the school year finished) and infertile (he had impregnated his secretary six months earlier).
My birth mother attempted suicide twice while pregnant with me, and showed up at my birth father´s workplace with a loaded gun, threatening to kill herself unless he married her. (He didn´t.)
She never had any other children.
Research now shows that a fetus absorbs its mother´s stress hormones. I was stewing in a grief and rage cocktail for months before I was even born, and the first and only time my mother held me as an infant was to say goodbye.
This past summer, she became the last of my nine parents [birth, adoptive, step, in-laws] to pass. My ongoing caring and grieving process has given me an even deeper understanding of loss and the impact of intergenerational trauma.
She passed away in July of 2024 at the age of 85.
Facing graduation, I plotted my escape.
As the valedictorian of my class, I got a scholarship/financial aid package and headed off to college. I double majored in psychology and Asian Studies, and spent my senior year studying in nine Asian countries. It opened the world to me.
When I returned to Oregon, newly graduated, it was the middle of a recession. Stuck at home and unable to find a job for months, I became convinced that the future I´d imagined for myself was slipping away.
I started to believe I would be unlucky forever.
Me with friends I met while trekking in Nepal, 1982.
But I recognized I needed a new mindset and fresh start.
I decided to legally change my full name.
I was ridiculed by friends and family.
My adoptive father even ¨disowned¨ me.
I didn´t care.
I went from Greta Welchoff to Maya Talisman.
And I fully committed to believing that I was magically LUCKY.
I breathed it in. I chanted it to myself.
I saw ONLY good things coming my way.
I imagined every detail.
Ding ding! Now watch how everything shifts...
My name change decree, 1982
Almost immediately, I landed a job teaching English in northern Japan.
Within two months of arrival, I met my soul mate, who grew up just ten miles from my hometown.
Two years later, we got married. Then, we had four daughters within five years, fulfilling my dream of creating my own family and doing things differently.
After five years in Japan, we settled in a college town in Oregon. My husband started an import/export business with Japan, and I taught ESL classes at the university.
Newlyweds at the Nebuta Festival in Aomori, Japan, 1985
When our youngest started preschool, I opened a vintage/resale clothing store that catered to local students and international resellers.
Those were fun seat-of-our-pants years, with four young children, three businesses (including a snowboard/skateboard shop), and a long list of community activities. I organized the building of a skate park and a Saturday Market for vendors ages 10-20, and won awards like Hometown Hero and Best New Business.
Very 90s me at Retro Active Clothing Company, 1996
In 1998, we took a three-month trip with our four daughters to Nepal and India, where my husband had spent a year as a Rotary Youth Exchange student at 16. It inspired all of us.
I got certified as a mediator and conflict resolution facilitator.
I served as the national outreach director for an environmental education organization, and later, as executive director of a peace and social justice non-profit.
When our girls were in middle and high school, I was reminded of my own experiences at their age, including the accident and its aftermath.
And I was processing the deaths of three of my brothers (one of AIDS, two by suicide).
I doubled down on my mindfulness practice.
And I remembered my fun little mindfulness game.
Me with my girls on the Oregon Coast, 2001
I thought it might help others. So, in 2003, I created a simple online course to teach it.
It captured the imagination of those who felt they were failing at meditation.
Through my course and newsletter, I was able to help thousands of people in over 100 countries get calm, clear, and creative.
My playful, eyes-wide-open approach to everyday awareness was featured in over 150 media outlets around the world.
Three of our daughters went on their own Rotary Youth Exchange years abroad.
Next, we sold everything and moved to Mexico. A year later, we moved to Argentina.
Our daughters were graduating from U.S. or Canadian universities at 19 or 20.
People asked how they did it. I wrote a query letter, and got a book deal.
My book, THE NEW GLOBAL STUDENT, was published by Crown (Random House) in 2009.
"Funny, innovative, and meaningful...a how-to guide with heart."
The Boston Globe
"Tremendous insight...essential reading for families yearning to step off the treadmill and plunge into the world."
Daniel H. Pink, New York TImes' bestselling author of DRIVE and A WHOLE NEW MIND
¨[This book] will open your eyes, get your heart pounding and your mind racing, and maybe set you off on the adventure of a lifetime.¨
Eric Maisel, author of CREATIVITY FOR LIFE and COACHING THE ARTIST WITHIN
As new empty nesters, my husband and I bought and refurbished a farmhouse in rural Uruguay.
That was great fun, but we missed being around kids. So, we decided to return to Asia to teach young children again.
We got jobs teaching at a private kindergarten in Beijing. Within a year, I was promoted to vice principal.
Weeks later, I was recruited from a pool of creative international educators to serve as the private English tutor for the family of Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, in Hangzhou.
Me teaching the Lucky Baby program I created based on the latest research in infant language acquisition, Beijing, 2011.
Cala, from my Cucina Tradicional series of 12 art tortillas celebrating Mexican Independence Day (embroidery on fresh flour tortilla with flour and corn) 2015
After four years in China, my husband and I moved back to Mexico, where we immersed ourselves in creating art.
During an epidemic there, I got chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus that causes severe joint pain.
I developed an excruciating related autoimmune condition similar to rheumatoid arthritis. It came with a terrible prognosis of a shortened life due to progressive joint and organ failure. I skipped the chemo-drugs-for-life prescription and did a full immersion in natural healing methods.
Within two years, I became completely symptom-free and healthy without ever taking medication.
In 2018, we moved back to Buenos Aires, where our youngest daughter was living.
We spent the pandemic there in a studio apartment during one of the longest and strictest lockdowns in the world.
To pass the time, I started creating nature-inspired digital art. I turned my work into NFTs that sold to collectors around the world, and donated the proceeds to organizations working effectively on climate change solutions, from training citizen scientists to supporting climate refugees.
I became a vocal advocate for sustainable blockchain practices and ethical AI standards. I spoke on international panels and published articles in sustainability journals.
My digital art was shown in exhibits in the UK, Spain, France, and Italy.
Bridal, shown at Poble Espanyol in Barcelona, Spain, 2022.
During this time, I also started Switch Strategies for Change to offer support to women who were struggling with grief and income insecurity. It was while doing this pro bono work that I developed my creative breakthrough technique to quickly help 88 women over 50 (the sole breadwinners for their extended families) in 18 countries rise to new levels of confidence, success, and joy.
In 2024, I launched the Future Foreword project to leverage what I had learned working with clients facing loss and grief.
I am deeply committed to collaborating with collapse-aware innovators and helping climate leaders turn their polycrisis anxiety into acceptance, post-grief optimism, and creative adaptation.
There´s a thing now called ¨lucky girl syndrome¨ that inspires some and gets others sputtering. Many insist that it is not possible to ¨think yourself lucky.¨
Well, it´s not enough to just think.
You have to ACT.
But once you change your mindset, things open up. I apply this same approach to helping others create intentional change for the common good.
Family visiting us in Buenos Aires, 2022.
We are limited only by our beliefs, our stories, and our willingness to change.
I choose to work with those who embrace the incredible challenges and possibilities that lie before us.
Matching the glacier in southern Patagonia - 2024
You have lived your own rich life full of transformational experiences that expanded and deepened your unique wisdom.
I would love to hear YOUR story, what you have learned, and how you have leveraged it.