I come to this work from my own path of personal evolution, change and healing which started when I was a teenager some decades ago, finding myself in pain and suffering and self-destructive behavior. I needed help and started a lifelong journey of seeking— seeking relief, seeking self-understanding, seeking feeling better and doing better— seeking thriving.
My life has taken various turns, with plenty of “two steps forward, one step back” periods— actually sometimes it was more like two or three steps back, or a fall down the stairs! But I have had an unending commitment to myself and my well-being which has been my faithful guiding star— a star I believe we all have that I’ve seen in every client I’ve ever worked with.
It is this experience and understanding that informs my work as a therapist perhaps more than any other thing.
It is from this place of clarity and well-being that I come to this work, to support and facilitate the clarifying, evolving, changing and healing process of others.
I really believe in the human capacity to heal, change, grow and thrive— even in spite of serious trauma and sometimes years of bad habits. I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced it. And I would be honored to support you in your process.
BACKGROUND
I received a BA in Communications with a concentration in Radio, Television and Film at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, my home town, in 1988.
I moved to California in 1995, and in 1998 started my first career in professional fine gardening, landscape design and care, and aesthetic tree pruning. I enjoyed this work immensely, and had my own business for nineteen years.
In 2015 I came to realize I needed to change my profession, and after a period of self-searching, I enrolled in the California Institute for Integral Studies in 2016. In 2019 I graduated from CIIS with an MA in Integral Counseling Psychology. I have been seeing clients since 2018 in a variety of settings including non-profit community clinic, private practice, dual-diagnosis residential recovery, non-public special education school, and group practice (including court involved therapy). I became a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in April, 2024.
Aside from my professional life, I am a musician, artist, gardener, parent, partner, cat-mom, and person in recovery.
