Would I connect with or even like her? Does she seem real and approachable to me? Is she flawed and imperfect like me? Can she take me further because she’s gone further already?
Maybe you are asking similar questions. Let me tell you about myself.
Therapy changed my life when I sixteen years old. Faced with a family that was struggling with dysfunctional patterns and an impending divorce, I got help in learning how to have my own life amidst the struggles of my family. Not wanting to lose relationships with my loved ones, I needed help learning how to be an adult within my family. The death of my older brother followed a few years later and I turned to my time in therapy to grieve and move forward. When I asked myself how I wanted to spend my work life, I knew it was to be of service to others as they traveled along life’s path.
I love people, from my family and friends to my clients and sometimes strangers in line at Trader Joe’s. I need alone time, love to read and am a non-cooking homemaker. Intelligent and intuitive, I believe these traits are both innate and have been honed by my own personal and professional growth work over the past 20+ years. I am ethical, responsible, honest, and funny.
I hate what shame does to people.
I delight in life…the ugly, the painful, the joyous and buoyant parts…all of it. There is so much separateness and shame in our culture, as we all struggle to “live our best lives” that I am afraid we forget the need to claim our humanity, our vulnerability, our strength, our pain, and our joy. I help people grow…in understanding of themselves and others, in how they experience and work with their feelings, and in helping them assess and recognize their choices.
I appreciate and grapple with our profound existential dilemma: we must wrestle to make meaning with birth, death, and all that lies between the two.
And finally, I am a woman, partner to my husband of 27+ years, mother to two great teenagers, a friend, a sister, a daughter, a colleague, a teacher, a believer, a seeker and a finder. My clients report that they feel both incredibly supported and challenged as they do their work inside and outside my office. I’d love to be of help to you, if possible.