If my artist life didn't work or if I needed to work in some capacity part-time in something, I knew I'd have a real life skill [become a therapist].

The work is important and essential and I've had a therapist myself for decades and it's important work, but I knew that I wanted to work with people who are more functioning and that's when I decided to pursue my performance career full-time.

Working with the body and the imagination - non-verbal ways especially - tap into our deepest wounds and our highest potentials as humans.

Right before I went to Pacifica, I had written and performed a one-woman show and I consider that to be my original art form. Spaulding Grey and Karen Finley and other spoken word artists and performance artists really very much interested me, that art form.

You will be faced with facing all the things in yourself that keep you from knowing who you are, you'll have to stand up to roles and definitions that your family and culture have given you.

There's a grip we sometimes some of us get on our pain and suffering and our past and our wounding that we over-identify with it. If we laugh at it, we're saying, "Oh, I'm laughing at myself, which means my victimhood isn't all of who I am."

I took everything really seriously and was overly sensitive about things, and I think that's rooted in perfectionism.