She wanted to be able to look back over her own life
when she was much older and say,
“Yes I did that.
And that.
And that, too.”
~ The Gazebo, a novel by Emily Grayson, (p. 288)
If you already know me, you are welcome to skip this page. If you are meeting “Debra Basham” for the first time, I want readers to know from the very start what is important to me. Thus, Emily Grayson’s words are a perfect opening quotation from her novel, The Gazebo. The Gazebo is a romance story about two people who love one another for a lifetime, even while their separate lives exist on different continents. Over several decades many individuals were woven into the fabric of my life. Some have become life-long friends. Others took divergent paths. May all be at peace with the fabric of our lives. May we see clearly how what at first appears as wandering blindly or bungling our way is warp and weft. In weaving, warp and weft are the two types of threads that are interlaced to create fabric — the warp threads run vertically while the weft threads run horizontally.
Perhaps think of the vertical threads as the events of life while the soul’s journey or your spiritually calling or divine guidance is that horizontal movement intercepting and connecting and giving meaning to everything. Written by Thomas Moore in Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, “…to the soul, the most minute details and the most ordinary activities, carried out with mindfulness and art, have an effect far beyond their apparent insignificance.” Although this About Debra page is written partially in third person, that is to allow readers to recognize your own intercepting and connecting; honor your own warp and weft.
The fabric of Debra’s physical life originated with a complicated birth story that was not revealed to her until mid-life. (See “Loved and Wanted” below). Debra has been a life-long resident of Berrien County, Michigan, where she and her husband, John, enjoy the beauty and healing of nature near the Lake Michigan shoreline and dunes. Parents of an adult daughter living near Nashville, Tennessee, Debra and John have two grandsons (both of whom have brought into their lives partners who are bonus granddaughters!) and one granddaughter. In 2020, Jackson, their first great-grandchild, was welcomed into the family by their granddaughter.
Her own teen pregnancy and marriage, drew her into youth ministries when she was less than 20 years old. Debra went on to begin steps into ordained ministry through the United Methodist Church in the 1970s, later withdrawing her formal ministerial process preferring life as an active layperson. She served in local, district, and conference programs, including serving as the District Director of Christian Camping for the Kalamazoo District of the United Methodist Church. While Chairperson of the Committee on Healing and Wholeness at the Stevensville United Methodist Church, Debra was instrumental in creating the first Parish Nurse position in Southwestern Michigan.
In Love & Survival: 8 Pathways to Intimacy and Healing, Dean Ornish, M.D., says “There is a time and a place for drugs and surgery. Even when these are necessary, they are just the beginning.” Discovering in 1988 she had been misdiagnosed with polio 33 years earlier and thereby unnecessarily traumatized by the separation from her home and family was not only shocking, but also shaping. Finding freedom from her own pain fueled her passion and respect for how emotional, mental, and spiritual dynamics as well as the physical affect each one of us.
Certified as a Healing Touch™ Practitioner, Debra was fortunate to be professionally mentored by Janet Mentgen. In July 1997, after completing the ministry program and being ordained as a Minister of Reunion by Betty Lue Lieber and Robert Waldon, Reverend Debra Basham began serving a church without walls. She was a frequent guest speaker at churches in the area, officiating numerous weddings and funerals, dedications and baptisms, helping people create meaningful ceremonies for everything from the blessing of a house to the ending of a relationship.
Debra’s sense of ministry to all was a profoundly soulful calling. Soon after moving the Holistic Alliance into the downtown St. Joseph location, in 1998 Debra trained in Prepare for Surgery/Heal Faster™ with Peggy Huddleston, Founding the country’s first not-for-profit and tax-exempt holistic organization, the mission statement of Holistic Alliance dovetailed with her personal values.
In 2000 Debra began consulting with Joel P. Bowman co-developing Subtle Communication Systems™, which combined conscious and unconscious awareness. She was licensed as a Master Practitioner and Trainer of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) through Dr. Richard Bandler and John La Valle and licensed as a Trainer of Hypnotherapy through the American Board of Hypnotherapy (ABH). Debra and Joel produced audios, published training manuals, and conducted workshops related to subtle energy and hypnotic language usage for personal healing and transformation. In addition to her private practice in St. Joseph, Michigan, Debra was the first nontraditional therapist on staff at Kalamazoo Psychology in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
In March 2001, Debra was privileged to support an extraordinary woman through her dying process. Influenced greatly by this woman’s conscious transition in what Native American’s would refer to as a good medicine death in October 2002, Debra co-facilitated the first gathering of The Grief Journey: Love, Loss, and Going Beyond. The group was for those who had experienced a recent loss, those who were having difficulty getting over a loss, and those who have reason to anticipate a loss.
Debra integrated into her practice and the Grief Journey Group Alan Bodkin’s “Induced After Death Communication” therapy for healing grief. Many people in the throes of a personal grief journey report having a strong sense of the presence of loved ones following their death and burial. Using the language of mysticism and teachings on shamanism encourages each person to recognize and honor one another’s experience. Some of those experiences include encounters with nonphysical realities that are available not only to specialists in the field of psychic phenomenon but also to everyday people like you. The personal experiences shared by the members of the on-going Grief Journey group and groups such as The International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) provided a loving container for Debra to integrate her own near-death experience at age 12 in an auto accident.
When asked how she got into the holistic health movement, Debra pointed to how life is always moving you in the direction of your heart or soul even before you have connected all of the dots. The trajectory of Debra’s life work actually began while she was still in the womb, yet the details of that would come as a menopausal discovery. Debra shared those intimate details of her life reading “Loved and Wanted” during Listen to Your Mother, in the spring of 2016.
Debra’s scope of practice included those individuals who were making the first steps to integrate emotional, psychological, and soulful meaning to health and well-being. She worked with parents of children undergoing serious surgical procedures as well as individuals journeying through cancer or other serious healing crisis.
Many of those starting out as clients became deep friends. Central in the realm of Debra’s “I did that” was to welcome as the fruits of her professional life profound relationships spanning over decades. Many stories of those precious people, such as her beloved Jane Foster, were told when Debra self-published Falling Together in Love: Stories From My Heart for and about YOU in 2012.
In a video interview, Jane Foster shares her experience with Debra’s “Imagine Healing” process:
The combination of Debra’s training and skills resulted in relief for many. She journeyed with those wanting to overcome anxieties, phobias, addictions, trauma, grief, bereavement, or loss. At core, no one knows what is right for an individual better than his or her own self. Using the resources from the individual’s unconscious mind, Debra facilitated clarity and peace during times of major decision and choice-making, not just for clients but for her own life.
Very rich themes with genuine love and connections provided the very warp and weft of Debra’s specialties woven into surgeries, illness, death and dying, pre-pregnancy counseling, job transitions, relationships, and situations in which the preferences and desires of the person’s soul can sometimes that can sometimes align with but also be in direct conflict with societal or cultural mandates.. Just as in The Gazebo, Debra’s life has been a romance story about people who love one another for a lifetime.
Yes, Debra did that. And that. And that, too….