[1] Born in New Mexico, her family had to return to her grandfather's home city of Detroit after a flood destroyed her father's under-construction school when she was a baby.

Her teenage years would see her begin an interest in poetry and publish several prize winning pieces even as young as twelve years old Marrying a teacher at the school, Fermor Spencer Church, soon after returning to work at the Ranch School, she worked on and published both poetry and writing pieces throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

By the end of the 1930s, Church's family settled in Los Alamos while continuing to work at the Ranch School, where she met and befriended restaurateur Edith Warner.

Moving several more times throughout the 1940s, the family once again settled and permanently resided in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Church would continue to publish her work until her death in 1986.

[2] The family moved back to her grandfather's home in Detroit after a massive flood in October 1904 destroyed the school her father was in the process of building.

She grew up in the nature of Three Mile Lake[clarification needed], but the family ended up making several home moves after the death of her grandfather.

Then, in the latter half of the 1940's, her husband took a job in Carpinteria, California at a private school, but returned a year later due to missing his family.

After Fermor's death in 1975, Church gave a series of poetry readings and attended events at nearby universities, but eventually moved to a retirement home named El Castillo in the Santa Fe area.

[1] The death of her father in 1933 caused Church to have a breakdown in her marriage and health, leading her to enter a rehabilitation hospital in New Haven, Connecticut nearby to her sister near the end of 1933.

This experience would result in Church looking into the work of Carl Jung in 1934, which would influence her writing after she began studying and recording her dreams.

[1] Michael S. Begnal in the Arizona Quarterly commented that Church's early collections of poetry, such as Foretaste and Familiar Journey, features a form of "dark ecology" that is a conflict between human existence and the environment.