MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Nancy Carnathan-Cribbs is a MFT with a private practice in Pacific Grove. She has been a member of CAMFT since 2000 and a member of MCCAMFT since 2005. Nancy was licensed as a MFT in June, 2007. Since 2006, she has served on the MCCAMFT board as the Pre-Licensed chair.
Growing up in Chicago, Nancy studied art, her favorite medium being oils and oil pastels. She married and moved to Ohio to begin a family. While in Ohio, she joined an art guild selling her oil paintings. In 1983 Nancy, her husband, daughter and son moved to San Jose. Nancy enjoyed having boutiques in her home making dolls, bears, quilts, and a variety of boutique items. She also started a small business as a vendor manufacturing orthopedic harnesses. Additionally, she made square dance clothing, wall papered professionally, and served on her children’s school PTA board as historian, treasurer, vice president and president.
Nancy has always had a passion for exploring spirituality and had an opportunity to go to the Mercy Center in Burlingame CA for four years of spiritual formation to become a Spiritual Director. She has been a practicing Spiritual Director since 1994 and is also a member of Spiritual Directors International.
In 1996, she began a long awaited dream of getting a college education, first, getting her BA in Business Management at the University of Phoenix in San Jose and then a masters in clinical psychology at JFK in Campbell. In 2001, Nancy and her two partners, Jim Peterson and Kent Smith created a non-profit, Soul Works Studio for the Art of Spiritual Direction. As spiritual directors, they offer workshops, retreats and spiritual direction for other non-profits, individuals and groups. In 2005 Nancy studied with Reike master, Frank Leonardi.
While pursuing her dream of going to college, she also went through a divorce, became a single mom with two teens, worked full time as a supervisor at a manufacturers rep firm, was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through chemo and radiation.
Nancy has always had a passion to journey with people as they explore life, whether healing, identifying and embracing their own passions, making sense of their lives or looking for the “more”. It was this passion that has motivated her own journey bringing her to where she is today.
Along the way, Nancy has gathered a breadth of experiences, some being as an incest survivor, overcoming an eating disorder, caring for her mother as she battled intestinal cancer, learning how to parent a special needs child, moving through two marriages and realizing the cliché that the third time is a winner. Her current husband, Jim, is the love of her life. Together they have arrived in Pacific Grove living in a cottage that affords them a piece of paradise as they enjoy their garden.
Last year, Nancy was gifted with the marriages of her daughter, Renee, and son, Matt. Nancy had the wonderful and unique opportunity to actually officiate her daughter’s wedding. (mom made good on a promise to Renee, made when Renee was 2 that she would marry her when she was “all growed up”) Nancy is tremendously proud of her two adult children feeling very blessed they are in her life. Jim’s daughter, Lauren has two beautiful grandsons, which opens them to the wonderful role of grandparents.
Nancy received her supervisor’s certificate in the past year and now is looking for a place to “plug in” as a supervisor, which will realize another passion, to be a mentor.
Nancy’s dream is to create a center that will offer a variety of healing modalities using art, music, gardening as well as therapy, spiritual direction, and other healing arts (i.e. acupuncture, Reike, etc.).
Nancy feels blessed to continue her journey as she explores life and helps others do the same.