I bring both professional training and lived understanding to my work. Having navigated adversity and complex life experiences that intersect with my identity, I understand how those early environments can shape our sense of self and access to resources well into adulthood. I truly know how hard it is to trust yourself and others, build meaningful connections, and recognize safer people.

I get how difficult it is to overcome the shame inherent to growing up keenly aware of feeling different. Some of my personal experiences include rural poverty, parental incarceration and mental illness, and generational, interfamilial harm. I’ve been paying taxes since I was 12 years old, and I’ve spent most of my time outside of academia in the service industry.

But it’s not been all bad. Actually, it’s been beautiful too. I have had the privilege to do many different things in this life so far, such as being on many stages in many different performing arts capacities, writing policy in organizational and political arenas, and even co-authoring a couple of academic research papers. I’ve been able to volunteer in all of these capacities and in rural community mental health as well. I am a caregiver to 5 animal siblings, a grateful partner, an amateur artist and gardener, and a relentless learner and nerd.

I found my footing through my own therapy, so I decided to become a therapist myself. I genuinely couldn’t be more grateful that I get to repurpose these experiences into the healing helper work I do now. As an observer, I have accumulated a unique mental database of human behavior. I am likely reading something that adds to that database as you read this.

All of this shapes my understanding of healing as a systems and bottom-up thinker. My work is grounded in abolitionist and decolonial values that de-pathologize the human experience. I recognize that many struggles are not simply individual but are connected to larger systems and ideologies that perpetuate harm. I integrate harm reduction and restorative justice principles to create a space where healing is not about "what's wrong", but about developing a deeper understanding of how you adapted to the contexts that shaped you. I’ll periodically connect your story to these larger systems and help you identify what about your current life is sustaining old patterns. Your dignity, confidentiality, and self-determination are non-negotiable.

As a therapist, I often notice subtle shifts that suggest something is happening beneath the surface that hasn’t quite made its way through to what’s being said. I stay patiently attuned to when it may or may not be appropriate for me to name that noticing until you’re ready. I may invite us to tune into the way something lights you up or the way it prickles at your shame. I may invite pauses to sit with something a little longer and I may gently challenge you.

I'm comfortable with silence, ensuring you have space to make your own meaning of your experience. I get excited by noticing relational patterns and witnessing you make those connections. I love witnessing you build trust in your own instincts, learn to laugh or cry without apologizing, and develop comfort in taking up space.

Sitting with me, it’s ok to contradict yourself, to be weird, to be messy, to have no words or to only be able to laugh through the pain. I’ll stay curious about what your nervous system is protecting, and we’ll understand it together before we ask it to change. I place value on the messy complexity of humanness above overly simplistic answers or quick fixes.

I work especially well with people who feel “different” in ways they can’t always explain—people who have learned to adapt, compartmentalize, or stay on autopilot to get through life; those who experience themselves as somewhere on the dissociative spectrum; the 2SLGBTQIA+ spectrum, the AuDHD/ASD/ADHD spectrum; and those who have found themselves in professional or academic work including those still in school. I am affirming of sex work, kink, and ethical nonmonogamy. I prefer they/them pronouns but as someone who is not very visibly queer, ‘she’ is comfortable enough.

If you’re ready for the “it gets messy before it gets better” work, let’s get started!