I am a queer, gender-fluid therapist who provides queer, trans, poly, neurodivergent, health at any size, BIPOC-affirming therapeutic space for adults and teenagers. The question of what the future might look like, and who we might become, if systems of oppression did not so drastically regulate and contain our bodies, psyches and relationships guides my work and my life.
I work somatically, using tools from Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems therapy in concert in my practice. This means that I center the felt sense of the body in my work with clients. Our work together will offer you tools to help you regulate your nervous system, by inviting you to tune into what is happening inside you at the sensation-level.
My practice centers LGBTQIA+ folx and generally people who navigate alternative approaches to gender, sexuality, and relationships. Currently most of my caseload identifies as both queer and trans. As a therapist, I am excited about supporting clients who have been excluded by mainstream society in some way, and/or asked to draw on their deepest reserves in order to survive. I believe therapy can be an invitation to uncover sides of ourselves that we have not been able to fully express in our lives so far, to find more agency and empowerment in our daily experiences, and to remove barriers to connection.
I aim to make space for the whole of you, and to consider all of your identities and the ways they intersect. I am committed to continuous interrogation of the privileged identities I hold, especially my white and able-bodied identities. My identities lead to both advantages and limitations in my ability to connect with my clients’ lived experiences. I believe power dynamics of any kind that present in the therapy room deserve to be acknowledged and explored at the right pace for the client, and I work hard to hold myself accountable through frequent training, reading and group consultation.
With couples and 2+ relationships, I help each member of the partnership(s) learn to regulate and understand their own systems, in order to have more freedom about the ways they show up with each other. I ground myself in a poly-affirming, sex positive and kink-positive approach to couple/partnership therapy. Engaging in intimate relationships often brings up each partners’ attachment history. We tend to be drawn to intimacy with people whose expression of their wounding brings our own wounds to the surface. When this happens, we might end up in conflict. These moments are also incredible opportunities to come to consciousness about, and shift our relationships to, our historical wounds. They arise so that they can be healed by our more mature selves.
By bringing more empathy, spaciousness and exploration to patterns partners find themselves at the mercy of, I help couples use the ways they trigger each other as initiation points for their own and collective healing. With this kind of attention, intimate relationships can be a tremendous opportunity to see ourselves more clearly, learn healthy boundaries, heal childhood wounds in a relational context, and create interdependent networks to sustain us in the work we wish to do in the world.
Participation in grassroots organizing is an important part of my life, and I think of my work in social justice movement spaces as an extension of what I do in the therapy room. So much of the trauma faced by individuals is a product of unjust systems. I see participating in social justice movement spaces as an essential element of working to address trauma on a societal and interpersonal level.
I am an art-maker and have a performance background in music, contemporary dance and political theater. Outside of work, I love to take dance classes, write songs and play them with friends, hike in the mountains, make a big mess in the kitchen, and jump in all the bodies of water with all the people I love.