Born in Dayton, Ohio with early childhood summers spent exploring the shores of Elk Lake in Michigan, Kristen was transplanted to Mercer Island, Washington when she was eleven. Always drawn to the outdoors and water, she spent her youth enjoying the liquid beauty of the Northwest and then Japan as an exchange student. Her year abroad gave direction to her college studies, starting at the University of Chicago and after a several year hiatus working on Cape Cod as a waitress and in upstate New York as an art teacher, she graduated with a BA from Vassar College and an MA from the University of California, at Berkeley (UCB) in Asian Studies.

Settling in El Cerrito, California, she did volunteer work in the community, concentrating on raising a family until both her children were in grade school. Then, realizing she wanted a career in horticulture, she resumed her studies in the community college system. Starting with landscape design and installation, she broadened her working experience at the organic vegetable and native plant gardens of Mudd’s Restaurant/Crow Canyon Gardens in San Ramon, California. Another shift in focus to estate gardening brought her to UCB’s Blake Garden in Kensington, California and then back to the Northwest where she joined the Grounds Maintenance staff at the University of Washington in Seattle. Read an article, "Distinguished Staff: Spexarth's energy, skill enlivens campus grounds " about Kristen's work here.

Her desire to find self-expression through the written word began during her year in Japan in 1965. Coupling the will to write with the inspired instruction of her freshman English teacher at the University of Chicago, the poet Henry Rago, her love of writing as craft began in earnest. Throughout the years of raising a family and learning a trade, Kristen continued to write, tracking her life’s journey through dream diaries and journaling. With her eldest son’s traumatic death, the foundations of her life were torn away and writing was all that was left. Events following Colby’s suicide taught her that she needed to reach out to others who were grieving, and thus Passing Reflections was born.