All About Me

Some of the Many Faces of Me

I AM
“MANYWOMAN”

That is the name my “spirit-guides” gave me in a dream about thirty years ago, (1980’s) and I have used it as an alias and website nickname often since then.   I feel it suites me well, as I can trace a long string of changing roles and “faces” through photographs collected over the years.   Those above are only a quick random selection and my picture files are full of varied and colorful “memories” from different ages and stages I have lived.  Sometimes it seems like they really were in different lives, some sort of re-making of myself occurred so frequently that I often wonder nowadays “Who Am I Really?”

It’s a good thing I’m now old enough not to be too concerned with that and feel pretty content to “just be me” whoever that is at the moment. Perhaps I should have been an actor since changing roles seems so natural!   Too late to try out that moniker… I will be content with those I’ve held:

• I was a   spoiled only child;
• shy, timid, bashful kindergartner;
• self-conscious but imaginatively creative pre-teen;
• a lead soprano in choir and groups from about twelve years of age through high school;
• soloist in church and school events in my teens; (studied at MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis during high school, but stopped singing entirely once I started college…that’s another story);
• very poor clarinet player in high school band, (but got moved to first chair in senior year due to some terrible mistake);
• B-Team Cheerleader;
• boy-crazy teenager;
• seamstress – sewing my own outfits during high school, college, and through my twenties;
• Interior Designer with Minneapolis’ most exclusive design studio as my first job out of college;
• Model for a friend who designed avant-garde outfits in my 20’s (1960’s);
• wife to first husband, Rick Chilgren, from 1959 to 1971;  We lived in Minneapolis
• I was obsessed with sewing Vogue style suits for work, looking “glamorously” cool
• I learned to cook gourmet meals and we had intimate parties at our small apartments which I decorated in modern minimalist style.
• (we traveled a great deal in those years _to Europe, the East and West Coasts, and Hawaii) and I became obsessed with travel photography…(some of those pictures will appear in this blog) ;
• During this period I left my design job to train with a group of people at the newly established Program in Human Sexuality as a sex educator and therapist ; (My husband was the founding director of this program)
• I met my second husband, Dan Weiss, in 1970 at a sex conference in San Francisco and we moved in together later that year, first traveling between apartments in New York City and LosAngeles,  then moving to Minnesota where Dan also joined PHS;
• At this point my life role shifted from “glamourous designer” to “bohemian hipster” and it was a period of lots of good ol’times…lots of parties, lots of friends
• and I learned to cook for large crowds… sort of.
• When Dan and I divorced, I again changed my image.. with more time to be introspective, creative, spiritually focused, I moved to live alone at our cottage on the lake by Annandale, Minnesota (where my family had owned cabins since I was born in 1940)I began to read and write.  I got rid of my TV and learned to be content with my own company.
• and here I learned to raise a flower garden and became quite obsessed with that activity every spring and summer for many years until the weather began changing and things no longer grow as I like and I don’t have the energy to work at it.
• The cottage I now call home, was built for Rick and myself by my dad when he sold his business and retired… I have lived here now for nearly 35 years and plan never to leave… although my life-pattern and role will no doubt continue to shift and transform in years to come.
• Since moving to live out here, I have had my own counseling practice in Minneapolis;  created and founded  “Woman’s Discover Institute” with a friend, Peggy Hunter, where we held workshops, retreats, and support groups for women.
• after we went separate directions, WDI metamorphosed into a creative workbook, and a thousand-page manuscript
• I wrote  ‘SEX AND THE GODDESS,  yet to be published, but from which I extrapolated to produce my PhD in 1998
• After moving to the lake, I bred purebred Himalayan and Persian cats for twenty years;
• I discovered the art of quilting and began creating Art Quilts and fiber Pet Portraits which I sometimes sell, but mostly give to friends
• I opened a store on Ebay and a shop on Etsy and belong to several other web-groups and sites related to quilting and other arts.
• I retired from the University in 2005, and took a ‘temporary’ job at Wal Mart in Buffalo, MN…which has lasted now 18 years… (and I soon hope to ‘retire’ from there too. )  Now I have published my first novel and am busily at work building this blog and planning another novel.
• Life goes on.  There have been many losses as well as changes, and I feel blessed to be here yet, still creating and writing… hopefully for a good while to come.

I did not plan to write my entire life history here… but it seems that is what I have done in a ‘nutshell’ as they say…  Feeling a bit foolish about it, but will let it be my “About” page here in the Blog.

 

Author Biography:
Karin E Weiss has been a therapist, teacher, and group leader in the field of Sexual Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Program in Human Sexuality, from 1970 through 2005. She retired to her home on a lake near Annandale Minnesota where she lives with her menagerie of cats and writes, creates art-quilts, paints and enjoys the peace and quiet of her simple life. In her career, Karin specialized in Women’s Sexuality and Spirituality, which she presented in workshops, seminars and counselling women’s groups. She created and wrote for local newspapers on a theme of archetypes and cycles in women’s lives and she published her Ph.D. thesis in 1998 on that subject. Because of a side-interest in astrological psychology, she combined her private counseling with her writing to produce professional astrological reports for clients who requested this. She has also published a picture book of her own paintings depicting the various character-roles that women may play throughout their lives, as these relate to archetypes in Tarot and Astrology and in Mythology and Legend. The Goddess Wheel was published in 2003 by Xlibris Corporation. The Raven Watched is her first full length novel.