My full name is Lyn Barrett Bussian. I am a retired professional woman with an MEd from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA, a Pennsylvania School Administrator’s Certificate from Pennsylvania State University, and an MDiv from Lancaster Theological Seminary in Lancaster, PA.  I am also a certified spiritual director from Mariawald Renewal Center, Reading, PA. I helped found United Friends School, a Quaker elementary school in Quakertown PA, and became their first teacher and first full-time Head of School. I taught in two different schools in the Bethlehem Area School District, Bethlehem, PA, was principal of the 550-student Muhlenberg Elementary School in the Allentown School District in Allentown, PA, and served as pastor at St. Luke’s United Church of Christ in Lititz, PA and First Congregational Church in Woodbury, CT.

I have led multiple retreats – spiritual and professional – on a variety of topics in a variety of settings and speak to large and small groups with ease. I am a prolific writer and have written countless sermons, meditations, curricula, funded grant proposals and newsletters. Currently, I am co-authoring an academic research paper on the efficacy of Gestalt Pastoral Care (“Grace Examined: Gestalt Pastoral Care”) and a book chapter on the same subject (“Gestalt Pastoral Care: An Opening to Grace” in Handbook of Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapies: A Practice-Based Evidence Approach). I have produced two documentary videos: Grace Examined: Gestalt Pastoral Care and Voices of Gestalt Pastoral Care which can be found at www.gestaltpastoralcare.org.  

My magnum opus is my memoir entitled Crazy: Reclaiming Life from the Shadow of Traumatic Memory which was published in 2022 and is currently available through online bookstores. I’ve been the guest on over thirty podcasts and lecture at universities and other venues about DID. I look forward to working on future manuscripts, including a meditation book for people with dissociative disorders and a book on forgiveness from the unique perspective of someone with a dissociative disorder.

My husband, Ron, and I currently live in the beautiful high desert of Las Cruces, New Mexico. I have four children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.  I was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder in 1992 and spent ten years in intensive therapy to heal from early childhood trauma during the most active portion of my professional life.