Becoming Buddhist: A Calling for Personal Growth

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

While appearing to have it all, one woman finds herself feeling empty in mid-life…until an unexpected meeting changes her life forever

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[This essay includes excerpts from This Fresh Existence: Heart Teachings from Bhikkhuni Dhammananda (Windhorse Publications, April, 2024)]

I have always been a spiritual seeker. At age four, I asked my brother, who was five at the time, “Where is God?” He answered. “Everywhere.” Puzzled, I searched through the bushes but never found what I was looking for. I kept my brother’s words in my heart and figured I’d find the answer some day. That answer came in mid-life through a serendipitous encounter with a Thai Buddhist nun, Venerable Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, who led my on a spiritual journey from which there was no turning back.

​The year was 2005. My husband, thirteen-year-old son, and I had just relocated from our suburban home in Northern California to Bangkok for my husband’s job. Even though I was fifty-four years old when I met Venerable Dhammananda, I was not yet my own person. I did not have agency, direction, or backbone. Although excited to be living in Thailand, I was not particularly happy. I was in survival mode.

A wife and mother first and foremost, I did not question my marriage of twenty years, and was not passionate about my career working for non-profit organizations. To the outside observer, I was a successful ex-pat mom, living a life of privilege in Bangkok, and while that