She was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. She received her B.A. In Child Development and Family Life from Purdue University in 1974 after which she returned to Iran and lived through the tumultuous Iranian revolution of 1979 and the Iraq war. In 1984 she returned to the United States and earned a B.A. in Music from UC Irvine. In 1992 she again returned to Iran where she taught piano and formed a group to study the works of C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell. These studies stimulated a search for her archaic roots, and she began to travel extensively, visiting and studying ancient ruins and Persian mythology. In 1996, she returned to the United States and attended Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she earned her Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology.