As a woman who studies small and large groups, I explore our capacity to hold otherness, contradiction, and complexity, within ourselves, in groups, and in organizations.  Through psychology, writing, and painting, I examine what becomes possible when we stop trying to eliminate the parts of ourselves and others that do not easily fit.  I am particularly interested in the parts of ourselves that may feel less desirable, less acceptable, or simply not “a hit” by the standards we have learned to measure ourselves by. The parts we may try to hide, soften, or change in order to belong.  Yet I have come to believe that these very parts can hold something essential. What we experience as our weakness, our awkwardness, our difference, or our otherness may also contain our deepest strength, power, originality, and magic.  Rather than asking how we can become more acceptable, I ask what might happen if we allowed ourselves to become more fully ourselves.  My work explores this tension between belonging and individuality, between the desire to fit in and the need to remain distinct. I am interested in the moment when what we once experienced as a flaw begins to reveal itself as a source of vitality and strength.  I see psychology, writing, and painting as three different ways of exploring the same human experience: the ongoing encounter between who we are, who we believe we should be, and the parts of ourselves that resist easy definition.  For me, holding otherness is not about resolving every contradiction. It is about creating enough space for complexity to exist, and discovering that sometimes the very parts we have tried hardest to hide are the parts that make us most powerful, most alive, and most uniquely ourselves.