About your THERAPIST

Well, I'm an odd-duck... have always been a little different, a little 'too much' at times (more times than I'd like to admit probably), and have always, I mean ALWAYS, have struggled to take the simple, straightforward path. It makes sense, then, that my journey to becoming a therapist was anything but straightforward.

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I never thought about being a therapist when I was younger. I was gonna be a writer, or possibly a lawyer because as my mother always said, I love to argue... but a therapist was not anywhere in my realm of possibilities. Sure, I have always been a helper, an empathetic listener, and maybe I had opinions or ideas on what people should do. I was always curious and trying to figure out why people did what they did (thus, my love for arguing - I was trying to understand the other perspective)... but again, I was gonna be a writer with lawyer as a close second. But the thing is, I didn't know until well into adulthood I had ADHD, which is apparently why I always procrastinated, had a million different ideas and WAY too many hobbies... I really struggled with the discipline needed to turn writing into a career. So I went to graduate school on a whim (seriously), and very quickly realized I was incredibly lucky to have landed right where I belonged.

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In the nearly two decades since making that somewhat impulsive decision, I have worked in many settings as a therapist. Started out doing direct care in residential treatment programs for youth, then became a child and family therapist in those same settings. Since then, I have worked in nearly every setting including school-based programs, in-home therapy, traditional outpatient therapy, DBT programs, inpatient hospitals for children/teens, and doing crisis assessments. I have been extensively trained in working with trauma, couples (relational) therapy, and DBT. While much of my career has really been focused on children and families, I am (once again), really focusing my work as a therapist on working with adults. I love working with the parents who never been able to work through their own childhood mess (because most of us older adults never knew what the word trauma meant but we surely experienced some bad shit!) and it's getting in the way of showing up how we really want to in all our relationships.

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MILKWEED is a culmination and fine-tuning of all my experiences in these different settings, with different models of therapy, and different combinations of systems.

The result: really understanding the complex and creative ways all humans will protect themselves when hurt; understanding and appreciating some of the most painful traumas happen in relationships with those we are supposed to feel safest with; respecting how much it takes to truly show up in therapy; and truly seeing, feeling, and believing how hard it is to not  be showing up better than you have been. This is especially true for parents, who often find themselves over-reacting or under-reacting, and just feeling like you are fucking it all up all the time.

MILKWEED is not a place where we just sit around trying to make you feel better. MILKWEED is a place that focuses on safety in our relationship with each other, so that it truly feels safe to undergo that painful-as-fuck process of transforming. I chose the name MILKWEED specifically for it's role in nature - MILKWEED nourishes and promotes true transformation (the metamorphosis) and that's what I'm here to help you accomplish.

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