I didn't start out doing this

I managed retail stores for years, then I stayed home with my kids. When my youngest started kindergarten I asked myself what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and I went back to school to find out.

What I found was that I liked helping people, and I really liked learning someone else's story. I also wanted to understand my own childhood and how it had shaped my adulthood.

That's the honest reason I got into this work. Most people are carrying that same question around whether they've said it out loud or not, and I'd rather we said it out loud.

What I believe about the work

A mentor told me once that the story we run on is mostly written by about age ten. It landed hard, because I could see it in my own life long before I could see it in anybody else's.

I don't think we become our full selves until we look at what happened to us and notice how it's still driving decisions today. That belief runs through everything else here, and how I work goes through what it looks like in a session.

Nobody in the room is above anybody. I'm experiencing this with you, not grading you on it.

That matters to me more than almost anything else about how I practice. I want real rapport. You getting to know me as a provider, me getting to know you as a person.

When clients tell me “you see me,” or “you understand what I've been through,” or “you're here with me,” that's the part I care about getting right.

How I am in the room

I'm casual. I want you comfortable, because comfortable is where people actually say the true thing, and I'd rather spend a first session getting there than working through a form.

I've been doing this a long time and I've trained in a range of methods: CBT, DBT, ACT, EMDR, Motivational Interviewing, Person-Centered and Essence-Oriented Therapy. That lets me fit the approach to the person in front of me rather than running everyone through the same track.

Outside the office

My family moved to Durango about twenty years ago. I'm a mom of three boys, married twenty-three years. I'll take any excuse to be on the water: rafting, paddleboarding, a day at the lake. Two fur babies I absolutely adore.

Being raised with two older brothers and then raising three sons is the honest reason I tend to do strong work with men. I grew up fluent in how they talk about hard things, which is mostly by not talking about them.