Joni Smothers

Joni Smothers was born in Conrad, Montana, and lived in North Dakota, Minnesota, Oregon, and Arizona throughout her childhood. She attended two years at Florida College in Temple Terrace, Florida, then moved to Alabama where she married and lived for 30 years. After she divorced, she and her son and daughter traveled west to San Diego, eventually moving north to Mt. Shasta where she settled and began work as a nanny and caregiver. She wrote "Journey of the Tree Child" 15 years ago while living in Alabama, and carefully carried the manuscript with her through nearly 2 years of homelessness while living in her car between the time she arrived in San Diego, and settled in Mt. Shasta. She holds the belief that nothing is coincidental, and that her soul created her earthly journey before birth. Therefore, she looks on her years of homelessness as a deep journey within and rich opportunity to be intimately involved with nature and elemental life. As a young child, born and raised in a fundamental Christian religion, this process of opening to God's creation and receiving the rich and timeless lessons they give was thought by her religious teachers to be sinful, and therefore discouraged as a means of inspiration. She loved the Psalms and the minor prophets that her preacher-dad read to her, though, drawing inspiration from them as she prayerfully and with meditation, penned the words to "Journey of the Tree Child". Each new reading, for her, is the constant discovery of another layer of truth and love.