Therapist.

Initiator.

Imperfectionist

Seeker.

Animal-Obsessed Dog Mama.

When I’m not counseling, I love to read, connect with nature, dance, and make music.

I am based in Gainesville, FL and licensed in both Florida and Oregon. I provide services to clients throughout both states.

My Credentials

Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist

Florida License #MT5065 // Oregon License #T2681

Lewis & Clark College Graduate School of Education & Counseling

Master of Education (MEd)

Lesley University Graduate School of Education

EMDR 1 + 2 EMDRIA Trained Clinician

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy approach that is primarily used to treat trauma-related disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

EMDR incorporates elements from various therapeutic approaches, including cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), psychodynamic therapy, and somatic therapy. The goal of EMDR is to help individuals process their traumatic memories and reduce the negative impact of traumatic experiences on their daily functioning, emotions, and beliefs.

PACT 1 Couple Therapist

Developed by Dr. Stan Tatkin, PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy) is a fusion of attachment theory, developmental neuroscience, and arousal regulation that supports couples to improve communication and interaction, get unstuck from unhelpful patterns, and find greater relational fulfillment. PACT has a reputation for effectively treating the most challenging couples.

PACT was developed out of cutting-edge research in three areas:

Neuroscience

The study of the human brain. Understanding how the brain works provides a physiological basis for understanding how people act and react within relationships. In a nutshell, some areas of your brain are wired to reduce threat and danger and seek security, while others are geared to establish mutuality and loving connection.

Attachment Theory

The explanation for the biological need to bond with others. Experiences in early relationships create a blueprint that informs the sense of safety and security you bring to adult relationships. Insecurities that have been carried through life can wreak havoc for a couple if these issues are not resolved.

Biology of Human Arousal

The moment-to-moment ability to manage one’s energy, alertness, and readiness to engage.

The PACT model stands out from most other forms of couple therapy with these key features:

Using the PACT approach, both the therapist and the couple focus on moment-to-moment shifts in the face, body, and voice. Therapists help partners learn to be more attuned and respond to these subtle shifts in each other.
During a PACT session, the therapist creates experiences similar to those troubling a couple’s relationship, and they help partners work through issues in real time.
PACT tends to require fewer sessions than do other forms of couple therapy.
PACT sessions often exceed 50 minutes and may last as long as 3–6 hours. Longer sessions allow for PACT therapists to work more deeply with couples.
PACT therapists may videotape sessions to provide immediate feedback to couples and to help couples pay close attention to their partner’s nuanced behaviors as well as their own.

EAGALA Certified Equine Therapist

The EAGALA (Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association) Model is an innovative therapeutic approach that combines horses, mental health professionals, and equine specialists to facilitate personal growth and emotional healing. This model utilizes experiential therapy techniques with horses as active participants in the therapeutic process.

Unlike traditional therapy sessions that take place in an office setting, the EAGALA Model incorporates the power of horses in a ground-based, interactive environment. This experiential approach allows individuals to engage in hands-on activities and interactions with horses, providing unique opportunities for self-reflection, exploration, and personal growth.

The EAGALA model is so effective because it embraces the science that humans learn best by doing. The model prescribes a hands-on approach where clients are given the space to project and analyze their situations, make connections, and find their own solutions. Since the solutions are personally experienced in conjunction with intellectual understanding, they tend to be deeper, more profound, and longer lasting.

When inside the arena, all the work is done on the ground with the horses front and center, deliberately unhindered and never ridden, and allowed to interact with the client as they wish. This creates the space for the client, with the support of the professional facilitators, to reflect, project, and make deep connections.

“The Paths to Enlightenment are as innumerable as those who seek it. This, too, is The Path. This, too, is it.”
Buddhist Proverb

My Story

I began my journey as a healer after struggling through my own mental health challenges as a teen and young adult.

The therapists I worked with affirmed, supported, and guided me through the difficult process of recognizing and updating the relationship templates passed down to me, differentiating my parts from my Self, and beginning my journey of accepting myself and my shadow.

In their own wonderful ways, each of these healers helped me recognize the weight of sociocultural and intergenerational trauma I carried, and ushered me through healing a lifetime of perfectionism, self-criticism and self-rejection, anxiety and depression, and the assortment of hurtful coping methods I had collected along the way.

More than a decade later, I achieved my dream of becoming a therapist, partly in homage to the ones that walked beside me during my darkest times, wholly in honor of the lonely little girl, the insecure teen, and the conflicted young woman within me who needed to be met with curiosity and compassion. I became the adult I had always needed.

I began exploring ways to develop and share the lessons from my own experiences in therapy with others. I pursued an incredible adventure as a Wilderness Therapy Field Guide in the Nantahala National Forest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There I discovered my deep love for nature, confirmed my calling as a healer, and understood through lived experience that we are inextricably linked to a network of systems that impacts our beliefs, identity, ways of relating, and experiences.

Years later, I moved to the Pacific Northwest to explore this vast, mystical land, and to achieve my Master’s Degree in Marriage, Couple, and Family Therapy at Lewis & Clark College.

Today, I am a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist in Florida (MT5065) and Oregon (T2681). I run a private therapy practice based in Gainesville, FL and offer online and Walk + Talk nature sessions. I also partner with horses to provide Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) sessions at a North Florida location coming soon.

“Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
Leonard Cohen