I offer a free 15 min phone consultation to discover if we would be a good fit or if one of our group offerings is a good fit. In our conversation, we will determine together if we think you may benefit from working with me or in an upcoming support group. If needed, I can assist you with an appropriate referral. I work both in person and telehealth. Telehealth can be much more convenient with the myriad of doctor’s appointments or not being able to leave a loved one alone if you are a caregiver or parent. I use a HIPAA-compliant platform that sends you a link to remind you of the appointment with easy one-click access by a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

In our sessions together, I will encourage you to ask questions throughout, take risks, be curious, and engage in expressive arts therapy to see what your brain will do with it! I may also ask you to "press pause" during certain discussions to slow down and watch what is happening in a different way. The overwhelming majority of clients I work with notice changes in their thoughts, emotions, reactions, and behaviors within a few sessions.

I offer hope, a break from the monotony of the ways you generally interact with others, as well as a dose of authentic connection - as I realize you might be pretty darn tired of fighting so hard to be present, get through recovery, or "get back to normal" ways of being. This is completely exhausting and leaves you feeling unseen and isolated. I am direct, swift, and gentle in helping you name the thoughts, sensations, and behaviors that have hijacked your life - as well as the thoughts and feelings you would rather be having instead.

Expressive Arts Therapy is a clinical field that draws on the interactive and integrated nature of the arts for healing and multimodal approaches. It is about reclaiming our innate capacity as human beings for the creative expression of our individual and collective human experience in artistic form. It is also about experiencing the natural capacity of creative expression and creative community for healing.

I believe busy hands open hearts. Craft fosters the ability to share and learn skills to cope with life’s events by developing a visual external resource and fostering the internal resource of belonging. Engaging in craft alongside other individuals assists in exploring what can not be verbalised at times and supports us in building community within our community. Having active hands allows one to engage in building relationships within a space of shared experience that is held by a trained provider.

Visual Narrative Medicine (VNM) is a process I define by which an individual processes traumatic events that alter the way they feel within and about their bodies and lives through the use of all five senses in visual form. VNM engages all senses in telling one's story through imagery, song lyrics, sheet music, textures and fibers, scents and colors, and mixed media. Everything but the kitchen sink goes into the visual journals individuals create and craft through the duration of their processing and beyond. These books become the visual narratives of our lives and a resource for coping with difficult times outside of sessions or following our work together. Visual Narrative Medicine documents one's resilience and recovery from life-altering moments such as a cancer diagnosis, a traumatic birth or the death of a loved one. VNM is a therapeutic craft that creates busy hands and open hearts when engaging in a shared space housed by the shared struggle that is the human experience.

Have you ever wondered why there are not more places to go for support when you have a chronic illness, are diagnosed with cancer, have moved into survivorship, or are continuing to deal with chronic illness or pain besides your medical doctor's office? Are you feeling like there is this big elephant in the room but it seems like you are the only one who can still see it? Do you feel like you are alone carrying the weight of trying to "get back to normal" after you are deemed cancer-free or following your surgery or once you finally discover the source of your pain? Or the weariness and feeling like a broken record when coping with “symptom management”?

In my practice, I strive to create a place for individuals and loved ones to come and process what the heck is going on with their mind and body in response to illness, injury, disease, upcoming procedures, or following surgeries and physical therapy. I believe this is a place where your experience can be validated and you can work with someone in safety to acknowledge how this, whatever this may be, has affected your entire life. It is an environment where you get to call the shots and determine what you want your story to look like. In this space, you can explore how you can even get to that point when you are living with pain and maintenance that can strip away the pleasure from activities, things, and people that used to fill your life with joy.

In my practice, I strive to create a place for individuals to come and process what the hell is going on with their mind and body in response to traumatic births, unexpected complications, NICU stays, miscarriages, and recurrent losses. All of these experiences and many others not listed here fall under Perinatal Trauma. This includes working with folxs who are experiencing a pregnancy following a traumatic birth and looking to have an improved experience this time around while coping with the fear of what happened before.

This is a place where your experience can be validated and you can work with someone in safety to acknowledge how this, whatever this may be, has affected your entire world including the way you feel in your own body. It is an environment where you get to call the shots and determine what you want your story to look like and how we can work to get there.

In this space, you can explore how you can even get to that point when the pleasure from activities, things, and people that used to fill your life with joy feels stripped away during a time “that should be the happiest days”.

How does one describe grief? The crushing weight of the loss, the unmoored feeling of having less gravity, less that holds you to this world? The frustration at the brain fog where trying to complete basic tasks feels like trying to think through pea soup.

Grief work is a slowing down process. It is not about rushing you to make sorrow easier to tolerate or for those around you to feel more comfortable in your presence.

Sometimes it is bearing witness to the outpouring of words that detail the story of how you lost your loved one, processing the trauma of witnessing medical interventions and/or traumatic deaths. There are days it is working with art materials because the words have stopped flowing and turning inward has begun. At times, it is a dialogue with anger, troubled relationships and adaptations that feel too much and too soon. Often it can be support and resources for the details of planning a service or learning to perform tasks your loved one used to do. It is learning how to carry your love forward without feeling shame for knowing you can not make a home in this place.

I have experienced significant loss in my life. For some individuals it can be beneficial to know if I have experienced a similar loss to yourself to feel like I could truly support you on this path. That is a valid question and I am happy to discuss my experiences with loss upon request.

In closing, the best way I have found to describe grief work was written by the poet Ullie-Kaye

Nothing at All

I want you to know that I will never try to take your grief and make it into something small. Neither will I tell you that the sun will come and shine again and spill itself upon your wall. I will not tell you that the better place that they are in should soften how you fall. Nor bring the mountains into view and say, “see, they’re not so tall”. I hope that on that dreary day when your life comes to a crawl, I search my heart, I hug you close and say nothing at all.