Photo by Natalia Mendez
About Me
I am an educator, an author, and a disruptor of the status quo, but above all else, I consider myself a force for healing in the world and I believe you are too. I am a champion for the power of stories and for bringing authenticity and creative innovation into healing and leadership spaces.
Since 2018, I have been supporting emerging healers as an AAMFT-approved Supervisor, and since 2020 I have been educating emerging healers and leaders as an adjunct faculty member at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, University of Massachusetts Global, Sofia University (formerly Institute for Transpersonal Psychology), California Institute for Integral Studies (CIIS), and Southwestern College (Santa Fe, NM).
For more than a decade, I bore witness to others’ deepest pains, greatest joys, and everything in-between, as a therapist in private practice. The focus of my work at Blue Box Counseling, was to serve those who felt left out of traditional wellness conversations, specializing in working with geeks, nerds, punks, queer folks, and those who came out of high-control groups. My primary theoretical orientations were/are Narrative Therapy and Internal Family Systems (IFS), in which I am certified.
In 2024, I stepped back from direct client care to pursue a PhD at Southwestern College (Santa Fe, NM), and to focus on the wellbeing of healers themselves. My primary goal now is to guide and support fellow healers through their work. I would be honored to be your supervisor, consultant, and/or mentor.
Photo by Vlad Rebek
My Style
Whether we are meeting for supervision, consultation, or mentoring, I will meet you in our shared humanity, and invite you to be compassionately curious about your own lived and inherited experience. Your wisdom, fears, and uniqueness will be honored here.
No matter what question you bring to discuss with me, I believe that there is an answer inside of you that will guide you towards a greater understanding of “the problem” but more importantly of yourself. We will be curious together.
My style is collaborative, and as non-hierarchical as is possible, while also recognizing the inherent power dynamic in relationships with differing experience-levels and financial exchange. Both things are true, and multiple truths can exist at once. In our work together, I will invite you to embrace a position of “both/and” rather than “either/or.”
What You Can Expect
Lots of stories: I use copious metaphors—mostly pulled from the modern mythologies of popular culture
Some challenges: I will invite you to continue to follow a trailhead to see what is beyond the first, second, or even third trail-marker. There may be more answers, if only we continue to be curious.
I will (almost) never tell you what to do: Aside from the rarest cases of hard-and-fast legal or ethical decisions, I will guide you towards finding your own choice and support you in how to implement it.
So many feelings: Sometimes there will be tears, and many times there will be laughter. I welcome all parts of you into the room!
Photo by Vlad Rebek
About Me as a Supervisor
I felt inspired to become a supervisor because of the supervision that I received as an emerging clinician. I experienced a spectrum of quality in my own supervision—ranging from the laudable to the lackluster—and they all shaped the supervisor I became.
As an emerging clinician, I experienced the pain of working in a high stress/low pay environment with a supervisor who did not have the space to offer me the support that I needed during my crucial therapeutic development. I felt like a cog in a machine—demoralized and unseen. I knew that I had to seek support outside of my site if I was going to continue doing this work.
I was fortunate to have had a professor in my graduate program with whom I had felt supported, Patty Hlava, PhD, LMFT (retired), and I was able to reach out to her for this supervision. Patty offered me compassion and invited me to step into my power as a healer and to trust my own intuition.
Later, I found another dynamic systemic and relational supervisor, Ginny D’Angelo, MS, LMFT, LICSW, with whom I had group supervision, and eventually supervision mentoring (supervision-of-supervision). Ginny invited me to bring my own family history into the supervision space—to consider what and who was with me in the therapy room in addition to my client(s).
My experiences with these supervisors changed my approach to my work, and ultimately to my life. I learned so much from them, and I continue to learn from each of my supervisees. They are also my teachers.
I consider the supervision space to be as sacred as the one created between client and therapist. It is an honor to carry forward the legacy of my supervisors, Patty and Ginny, and to invite new clinicians into this lineage. Welcome.