I’m a 46-year-old, cis, queer, white woman from a middle-class background raised in Atlanta, Georgia. I respect the uniqueness of subjective experience, including how that unique subjectivity can be impacted by the systems we live in and all forms of oppression. It’s an important part of my approach to explore how that inevitably impacts the way in which we all locate and experience ourselves, and I’m in a humble process of owning my biases and the privilege inherent in how I move and am received in the world in contrast to those who don’t share my advantages. 

Before becoming a therapist, I earned a BA in English, worked as an English teacher in two different countries, then settled in the Bay Area, where I completed an MFA in Creative Writing. My love of language informs my work as a therapist, and I often find that words or phrases take on active roles in transformation, as well as images, art, nature and figures. My exploration of my own somatic experience began with over a decade of yoga practice and a teaching certification, as well as an Insight Meditation practice and love of dance and intuitive movement. I have a deep respect for how trauma, memory, emotion, and deep knowing are held in the body that is informed by my studies in neurobiology, trauma, and the nervous system.

After a second career in tech writing, I obtained an MA in Integral Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. It was at CIIS that I first discovered Gestalt therapy as therapist in training and a client. The change I experienced with Gestalt was more impactful and transformative than any I’d ever experienced in other therapy modalities, and I knew I wanted to focus my training there, so I could offer the same to clients.

After my coursework at CIIS, I trained in Gestalt therapy and held a clinical practice for two years at the Church Street Integral Counseling Center. I joined the Bay Area Gestalt Institute in 2019, where I held a clinical practice as a licensed therapist in community with other Gestalt practioners, completing numerous other trainings in other therapeutic approaches that complimented and deepened my Gestalt approach. I recently transferred my private practice and license to Durham, North Carolina. I enjoy hiking by the Eno River, gardening, seeing live music, and dancing.

My practice occupies the ancestral lands of the Skaruhreh/Tuscarora, Lumbee, Cheraw, Catawba, Occaneechi, and Shakori Native American tribes, and I gratefully acknowledge the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands I live and work.