You are welcome here. My practice is inclusive of Black, Indigenous, People of Color and the LGBTQIA community.
Hello you.
Here are some of the reasons clients find their way into my office:
Depression
Anxiety
Grief
Trauma and PTSD (including Complex, Racial and Multi-Generational)
Low Self-Esteem / Self Hatred
Parenting struggles
Feeling lost and / or stuck
Sorrow or fear about the degradation of nature
Stress about our current political climate
I received an M.A. in Integral Counseling Psychology from The California Institute of Integral Studies in 2008. After my initial training in Gestalt therapy at the Church Street Counseling Center, I interned with The Holos Institute, a holistic counseling and Ecopsychology center, and remain associated as consultant and educator. Currently I am completing certification in working with C-PTSD via The Neuroaffective Relational Model (NARM) . I have also completed training in working with trauma in the Hakomi Method, a somatic/mindfulness based therapy. After the Sonoma/Napa fires of 2017 I trained in Skills for Psychological Recovery. Prior to graduate school I worked extensively for 10 years with children (infant – 18yrs) as a teacher in Theater Arts (including Drama Therapy) and Environmental Education.
In 2017 I completed advanced training in Death Midwifery and green funerals. I am also a Certified California Naturalist and specialize in edible and medicinal wild plants. I received my Permaculture Design Certificate in 2015 and am an herbalist with over 20 years of experience and study.
I combine an inborn ability to give counsel with trauma informed techniques that are supported by science and the field of psychology and neurology. I believe in the healing power of warm humor, along with being an empathic presence who really sees and gets You. I make the darkest places feel safe to explore and celebrate with you as you move towards wholeness.
Some of the tools I employ include:
Gestalt techniques
Somatic awareness
Mindfulness
Ancestral connection
While the journey that we take together will be unique to your needs, my hope is that your experience will be three-fold:
A more easeful mind, having found peace through new intellectual understanding and mindfulness practice.
A heart healed and comforted through the process of contacting old emotional memories in the body and giving them the attention they need to finish releasing.
A sense of wholeness, clarity and joy, through the gentle integration of all parts yourself (even the ones that seem unacceptable).
In addition to traditional 50 minute in-office sessions, I also offer an Ecotherapy option (90 minute and daylong sessions in the wild spaces of Sonoma County). Ecotherapy includes the added dimensions of:
Deeper understanding of personal cycles by experiencing their correlation with seasonal ones.
An increased sense of belonging through connection to place and its natural history; the stories, names and ways of the natural world and all its inhabitants.
A decrease of anxiety, depression and fear through greater intimacy with your internal sources of support, as well as the resources available through a reciprocal relationship with nature.
Increased vitality and physical health that occur by getting outside; higher immunity, lower blood pressure, serotonin release, vitamin D uptake, and better circulation through exercise.
Rejuvenated inspiration for giving back…to loved ones, your community and the environment.
When not in session I enjoy my family and motherhood, herbalism, beekeeping and hanging out with our flock of 10 chickens.