HerStory

Background

Beth was the first child of a teenage mother, a hot blond who loved to tan and dug holes for her big belly in the sand. The pound of the Pacific lives forever in Beth’s psyche. Like her mother, Beth spent most of her childhood in foster care but unlike her mother had the resources, time, and access to birth control to spend her adulthood healing.

When Beth was three years old, she and her mother disappeared from their hometown of Santa Cruz, CA for five months. When they returned, it was reported that Beth was so emaciated she had a hard time walking and “seemed to be in a nightmare.” What happened during that time was well documented and sealed in court records that Beth would reclaim as an adult. They detailed severe physical and sexual abuse, amounting to torture by her mother’s boyfriend. After escaping and returning to the family, Beth’s mother, not done with drugs, not done with him, abandoned her and went on to raise a family with that same man.

Beth’s biological father also abandoned her at birth and many times after.

For a long time, Beth thought she was the common denominator. She was not. The common denominator was her parents own childhood trauma and their substance misuse as attempt to cope with the pain of their own childhoods.

From three to six/seven-years old Beth lived under protective custody in kinship care with extended family. One day, while her aunt or uncle yelled and smashed inside, she stood outside under a great tall palm tree that seemed to go up forever. She would look up past its scraggly palm leaves and think something like, “it can’t be like this everywhere; there has to be something different.” It was her Disney Princess Belle at the fountain, blue birds flying around her head, nose in a book, “there must be more than this provincial life,” moment.

She was removed by child welfare from that home and moved many times more until she landed back in her place of birth, with a trusted aunt. She would grow taller in the redwoods behind their rented home, their magical mossy forests, the soft ground, a safe place to lay down for a while. Her aunt had no intention to raise Beth and so she was put up for adoption. After one failed adoption attempt, at nine years old, Beth settled into a stable but emotionally and psychologically abusive foster family. The youngest of six girls, where love was contingent on how well they scrubbed the floors, it felt like a different kind of torture, with body shaming and all you could eat tater-tot casserole.

Court-ordered weekend reprieves with her aunt, a couple of weeks at an overnight summer camp just for foster kids, and school got Beth through that time. She always loved to learn and was a bit of a class clown and theatre nerd. She graduated high-school with a 4.0, six college credits and a full-time job at a diner. She went straight to Chico State University where she earned her bachelors degree in psychology in four years. Later she would go on the get her masters in public administration at Boise State University, where she focused on studying the foster care system.

Healing

It was on a college backpacking trip that Beth began to feel that something different she’d suspected existed under that palm tree all those years ago. Soon after college she took a job in outdoor education with teens and moved to the East Coast. Beth would learn her outdoors skills canoeing through the Florida Everglades, backpacking the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina and portaging across the large lakes of central Maine. She experienced peace in these places and it would create in her a lasting and saving bond to nature.

In her late 20’s Beth settled in Burlington Vermont where she found her cats, storytelling and stand-up comedy. Stand-up comedy and storytelling would be a foundational for Beth’s long over-do reunion to the human experience and the rebuilding of her sense of self. The stage was always her first home.

In her early 30’s Beth followed a boyfriend to Idaho; it was her “Belle goes to live in a haunted castle with a prince,” moment. She struggled with the move and the loss of community and was unable to trust her very trustworthy prince. With his support she began working with a childhood trauma specialist who diagnosed her with PTSD and suggested she get a copy of her court records. Together they processed the horrific events documented there through EMDR. This was a critical part of her healing journey she would not have had the resources to afford on her own. The relationship did not survive.

Many more years of chronic unemployment and failed relationships would follow alongside the pursuit of all things healing: backpacking, trail work, stand-up comedy, storytelling, writing and meditation. As her process deepened and information became more available, Beth discovered that she has complex-PTSD- it made any long-lasting relationship feel impossible. The cruel irony is that healing from c-ptsd can only really be done in relationship to others. It was a long, slow, painful process that was marked mostly by failure, but eventually Beth learned how to be a good friend to herself first and others and found a community in fellow artists which remains.

Now

Beth lives in Idaho, although she missed the sea, she is growing where she was planted. She continues to perform, write, heal, and advocate. She is vocal supporter of equity through transportation and is a strong advocate for better access to a mixed-modal approach. In March 2025, Beth debuted a reading of her first play titled, “The Intersection,” a short comedic sketch that draws the connection between our mode of transportation and state of mind. She is a very active member of Idaho’s Child Welfare Advisory Board and is working to improve the foster care system in Idaho.

Beth is also the host and curator of Story Story Late Night where she crafts and delivers her stories live, coaches featured storytellers and is notorious for her riffs on stage. She still performs her dark, politically critical comedy (see shows tab) and is working on her first book of personal essays she hopes to have finished by the end of the year. She welcomes opportunities to speak to survivors and other public servants working to improve our public systems.