Teresa's Bio
For Teresa, animals and animal issues provide the core meaning, guidance, joy, and purpose of her life. She believes passionately that it is time for our relationship with animals to evolve--beyond the love, companionship, inspiration, joy, exhilaration, wisdom and healing we receive from animals to move on to accelerating our giving back to the animals--by helping those who face and suffer from myriad threats of human activity on the earth. With such reciprocity our relationships with animals are more balanced, mutually healing and whole. Animals are not here to simply give to us. We are here on earth together. Those of us who love animals, and especially those of us who receive so much from them, have a responsibility to give back and help them.
Teresa has been offering grief support services for people who have lost their animals since 1986, and began her professional animal communication work in 1991, though she has talked with animals since her childhood. Today she maintains an active animal communication practice, teaching schedule, and is writing a series of books on our relationship with animals, in addition to her audio book on grief, Legacies of Love, and a series of other educational CDs currently available. Teresa is a contributing author in the books Animals in Spirit by Penelope Smith and Dolphins and Whales Forever. She also founded and leads the Animal Loss and Grief Support Certification Program—an in-depth program to train pet loss grief counselors. She has worked with thousands of clients in her practice and classes from the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Costa Rica, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Namibia, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, and Taiwan.
Her traditional education includes a master's degree in counseling from Villanova University, and an undergraduate degree in psychology and criminal justice from Alvernia College. She graduated with honors and earned both degrees while working full time. She has also completed post graduate work in counseling and organizational development at Columbia University, Wharton, and with Carl Rogers at the University of Nottingham, England. She has also completed the Clinical Training Program in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at the National Center for PTSD, Dept. of Veterans Affairs, and has studied at the Grief Recovery Institute, with Elizabeth Kubler Ross and Stephen Levine. She is a member of the Association of Death Education and Counseling and has presented at their international conference. Her healing arts education includes animal communication with Jeri Ryan, flower essence training at FES, Desert Alchemy and Perelandra, energy healing training in Reiki, and Therapeutic Touch and psychic studies with Evelyn Isadore. The animals, however, are her constant teachers.
Prior to her work with animals and the people who love them, she worked for ten years as training and organization development manager for RCA in New York City and New Jersey. Before her corporate career, immediately following the completion of her undergraduate degree in 1976, she worked as a counselor then a group home manager with adolescents for the Juvenile Justice Center in Philadelphia.
Her entry into the grief recovery and animal welfare fields began when she lost her first cat in 1985. Unable to come to terms with her grief, she sought therapy and began a rigorous review of the grief literature and grief workshops. Over time, these sources helped her heal and understand the grief recovery process. This motivated her to design and offer various grief workshops and to publish the audio book Legacies of Love to help others through this disenfranchised loss. Since then, Teresa has worked with thousands of grieving humans, individually, in workshops, and in bereavement support groups. This included a year's work at a hospice where she led support groups and conducted competency analysis research which resulted in the creation of the Grief Support Skills Profile. Teresa is passionately concerned about the U.S. pet overpopulation epidemic, the trauma this creates for the animals, and the grief and compassion fatigue experienced by shelter and rescue employees as well. For eight years she provided compassion fatigue workshops to shelters throughout the U.S.
Teresa has been named to Who’s Who of American Women, is the recipient of the RCA President's Award and the Gwendolyn May Award for Humanitarian Work by the SPCA of Monterey County. She has been an invited speaker at numerous conferences of animal welfare organizations such as The American Humane Association, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary and National Association of Professional Pet Sitters. She has served on the boards of several non-profit animal welfare organizations. Her whale trip has been featured on PAX televisions network’s Animal Miracles show. Her animal communication work has been featured on the television shows Beyond with James Van Praagh, the documentary Psychic Connection: Exploring the Spiritual Link Between People and Animals, in Communicating with Animals by Art Myer, Penelope Smith's Species Link Journal, The Flower Essence Society's International Journal of Flower Essence Therapy, and various newspaper articles.
For information on Teresa's work with whales visit her Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sacred-Swims-Communication-with-Humpback-Whales/137123459640515
She lives with her beloved cats Natalia and Little K in Carmel, California near the whales, harbor seals, sea otters and sea lions in the sea, and with the hummingbirds, squirrels, and beloved plants in her garden.
Natalia center
Little K and Natalia lower left
