Marianne Williamson

Marianne Deborah Williamson (born July 8, 1952) is an American author, speaker, and politician.

She began her professional career as spiritual leader of the Church of Today, a Unity Church in Warren, Michigan.

Williamson was born in Houston, Texas in 1952.

She is the youngest of three children of Samuel "Sam" Williamson, a World War II veteran and immigration lawyer, and Sophie Ann Kaplan, a homemaker and community volunteer.

Williamson was raised in an upper-middle class family that practiced Conservative Judaism.

Her family attended Congregation Beth Yeshurun.

She learned about world religions and social justice at home and became interested in public advocacy when she saw her rabbi speak against the Vietnam War.

In 1965, after Williamson came home from school in the seventh grade, she recounted to her parents that her teacher supported the Vietnam War.

Her father reacted by taking the family to Vietnam to help explain to Marianne why he thought that the war was wrong.

She has said that through travel she "had an experience, at a young age, that people are the same everywhere."

Williamson attended Houston ISD's Bellaire High School.

After graduating, she spent two years studying theater and philosophy at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where she was a roommate of future film producer Lynda Obst.

In 1973, Williamson dropped out of college and lived "a nomadic existence" during what she calls "her wasted decade".

Williamson moved to New Mexico, where she took classes at the University of New Mexico and lived in a geodesic dome with her boyfriend.

The couple broke up a year later.

Marianne then moved to Austin, Texas, where she took classes at the University of Texas.

After leaving Texas, she went to New York City, intending to pursue a career as a cabaret singer; however, she has stated that she was distracted by "bad boys and good dope".

Vanity Fair wrote that Williamson "spent her twenties in a growing state of existential despair."

In New York, Williamson suffered from deep depression following the end of a relationship.

She has said that this experience gave rise to a desire to spend the rest of her life helping people.

Although initially uninterested due to her Jewish faith, Williamson developed an interest in Helen Schucman's book A Course in Miracles in 1976.

She explored spirituality, metaphysics, and meditation as she began reading the Course "passionately".

She also reconciled the Course with her Jewishness; in her view, "A conversion to Christ is not a conversion to Christianity. It is a conversion to a conviction of the heart".

Williamson said the book was her "path out of hell", as she had been "mired in a series of unhappy love affairs, alcohol and drug abuse, a nervous breakdown, and endless sessions with therapists."

The Course has often been described as a religion or pseudoreligion.

Williamson disagrees, describing it as a "spiritual psychotherapy" instead of a religion.

In 1979, Williamson returned to Houston, where she ran a metaphysical bookstore coffee shop, sang Gershwin standards in a nightclub, got married and divorced "almost immediately", and underwent a "spiritual surrender".

In 1983, Williamson had what she has called a "flash" to close the coffee shop and move to Los Angeles.

She got an apartment in Hollywood, where her roommate was 17-year-old Laura Dern.

Dern has stated that Williamson "held prayer groups in our living room."

Williamson's teachings stemmed from an inspirational message: "Divine love is the core and essence of every human mind."

Williamson has been actively involved with charity work, founding such organizations as Center for Living in 1987, Project Angel Food in 1989, and the Peace Alliance in 1998.

She sits on the board for RESULTS, a nonprofit group which is dedicated to finding long-term solutions to poverty.

Williamson has written several self-help books, including A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles in 1992, which became a New York Times Best Seller.

She was launched into prominence by Oprah Winfrey, being a frequent guest on her daytime talk show and becoming known as her "spiritual advisor".

Williamson ran unsuccessfully as an independent for California's 33rd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives in 2014, finishing fourth with 13.2% of the vote.

She ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, eventually dropping out and endorsing Bernie Sanders.

She runs in the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries, challenging incumbent President Joe Biden.

Williamson's presidential platform calls for an end to the war on drugs, a federal minimum wage increase, reparations for racial injustice, addressing climate change, and creating a U.S. Department of Peace.

On February 7, 2024, she announced she had suspended her campaign after receiving 2.9% of the vote in the Nevada Democratic primary, but on February 28, 2024, Williamson re-entered the presidential race after placing third in the Michigan Democratic primary, receiving 3% of the vote.