I haven’t always wanted to be a therapist...

After college, I was climbing the ladder in a career in organizing and public policy for LGBTQ and reproductive justice issues, but the work left me drained. With no back-up plan, I made the terrifying decision to leave my stable job to piece together a living until I knew what to do next. This was a turning point in my life because I learned that the best decisions are rarely the easiest.

If I wanted to find purpose and meaning in my life, I was going to have to create it myself.



I started training to be a doula and attended several births. I toyed with the idea of becoming a midwife. I fell into work as a nanny. My experiences with infants and young children unlocked reserves of nurturing and love I had no idea I was sitting on. As I opened myself to the experience of caring for children, I discovered a hidden world of play, connection, and joy. My new schedule allowed me to pursue my interest in yoga, which led to a transformative yoga teacher training. Through my training, I discovered my gift for being present with others through scary and overwhelming emotions. I had stumbled onto my vocation as a therapist.



By choosing to leave behind comfort and familiarity, I discovered the purpose and meaning I had been searching for.

It is my life’s work to help others unlearn the oppressive conditioning that separates them from their worth and connection with others to find the purpose and meaning that’s waiting for them.

My Approach

Intersectional: The more than 20 years I’ve spent studying and working in social justice movements greatly informs the work I do as a therapist and clinical supervisor, as well as my work as a trainer and consultant. I’m attuned to the ways that our intersecting identities of race, class, gender, sexuality and a host of other categories impact our sense of safety and wellbeing. If we don’t feel safe, it’s hard to connect with others. We find ways to dull or avoid those fearful feelings by working, drinking, using drugs, distancing ourselves from people, clinging to people, the list goes on.

Somatic: I was taught to distrust my body, to expect it to be weak and unpredictable and to ignore the messages it sent me in favor of thinking and doing, more “productive” modes of being. While this strategy served me in excelling in school and work, it left me feeling disconnected from so many parts of myself and made connection with others challenging. When I first began taking yoga classes at a gym, I didn’t do it as a way to care for my body but because I thought yoga would help me shape, control, and manage my body into a form that was more culturally acceptable. Gratefully, the teacher who taught the class had a different perspective, and, for the first time in my life, I was encouraged to pause and listen to what my body had to say. How did my body want to move and breathe? Where was it holding tension or emotion, and where was there space and stillness?

Nearly a decade later, my training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP), a body-focused talk therapy, expanded upon my knowledge of how to enlist the body to facilitate healing from trauma and developmental wounds. SP gave me language and tools to help my clients bring the wisdom of the body into healing conversation with thought, emotion, and story. I completed advanced training in SP in 2018, and I have continued my training in somatics through extensive self-study, including a course on Somatics, Trauma & Resilience led by Staci Haines through the Strozzi Institute.

I believe it’s crucial to integrate an analysis of power and systemic oppression into somatic work. Until we live in a world that isn’t shaped by systems of oppression, everything we do with our bodies is political.

Relationship-Focused: Human beings are hardwired to bond and connect. Connection with others is essential to our survival as a species, which is one reason that social isolation and disconnection can be so distressing. Human brains experience the emotional pain of disconnection in the same areas of the brain as they experience physical pain. That’s why all of my work is focused on building healthy, sustainable, nourishing relationships. These relationships can take innumerable forms and don’t need to be confined to marriage, monogamy, romantic relationships or only to connections with other humans. (Pets are people too!) For many of us, the first time we experience the safety and consistency of a stable relationship, one with healthy boundaries and clear communication, is in the context of therapy. Once we learn that this type of connection is possible, it can be easier to access with others outside the therapeutic relationship.

Education

• Master of Social Work (MSW) from the University of Georgia

• Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Religion and Gender Politics from Agnes Scott College

Training

• Training in the Developmental Model through The Couples Institute

• Collaborative Healing with Internal Family Systems with Tasha Hunter, LCSW & Deborah Klinger, LMFT

• Professional Development of Supervisees with Dr. Linda P. MacRae

• Cultivating the Supervisory Alliance: Strengths, Stressors, & Solutions with Theresa Palmer, LCSW

• Treating Complex Trauma with Internal Family Systems with Frank Anderson, MD

• Loving Justice: Trauma-Informed Conflict Skills with Kai Cheng Thom

• Story Medicine for Racial Healing with Meta Commerse

• Year-long Guided Book Study of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Healing and the Pathways To Mending Our Hearts & Bodies by Resmaa Menakem

• Somatics, Trauma & Resilience with Staci Haines - The Strozzi Institute

• Clinical Supervision Certificate Training - NASW-NC Chapter

• EMDR - Integrating EMDR Into Your Clinical Practice - EMDR Consulting with Roy Kiessling, LISW

• Essentials of Internal Family Systems with Ted Riskin

• Sensorimotor Psychotherapy - Level 1: Training in Affect Dysregulation, Survival Defenses, and Traumatic Memory & Level 2: Affect Regulation, Attachment, and Trauma

• Yoga for Trauma Advanced Training

• 500 Hour Yoga Teacher Training Certification from Peachtree Yoga Center

• Undoing Racism Community Organizing Workshop with The People's Institute for Survival & Beyond

Presentations

• Empowering Partners: Providing Support to Partners of Transgender, Non-Binary & Gender-Questioning People - NASW-NC Clinical Social Work Institute - May 2022

• Ethical, Trauma-Informed Practice with Transgender and Non-Binary Clients - East Tennessee State University Social Work Professional Development Conference - February 2020

• Trauma-Informed Practice with LGBTQ-Identified Clients - Pyramid Healthcare - November 2019

• Trauma, Attachment & Transgender/Non-Binary Experiences - Western Carolina University School of Social Annual Field Instructor Workshop - March 2019

• Trauma, Attachment & Transgender/Non-Binary Experiences - UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work Clinical Lecture Series - October 2018

• Moving from Ally to Accomplice: Supporting LGBTQIA Members of Your Organization - Part of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits’ webinar series: Walking the Talk: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in North Carolina Nonprofits - June 2018

• Trauma, Attachment & Transgender/Non-Binary Experiences - Asheville, NC - May 2018

• Ethical Practice with Transgender Youth & Their Families - Asheville, NC - October 2017

• Ethical Treatment of Transgender Youth & Their Families - Asheville, NC - April 2017

• Exploring Trans Experience - Land of the Sky UCC - May 2016

• In Our Own Words: A Panel of Trans-Identified Individuals (Moderator) - Gender Education Demystification Symposium (GEMS) - January 2016

• Supporting Transgender Youth & Their Families - Break by the Lake: A Student Services Personnel Conference - October 2015