The short version:

I became a therapist because I started paying attention.

I noticed it first in my dad's hands. The stress of his career showed up physically — dry, cracked skin that made the things he loved, like tennis and tinkering, genuinely painful. Lotions didn't fix it. Time off didn't fix it. It didn't go away until he retired. Years later, I watched the same thing happen to my husband — two days before returning to work as a SWAT officer, like clockwork, his hands would tell the story his words didn't.

I wanted to understand that link. The one between what we carry inside and how it shows up in our bodies, our relationships, and our lives. That curiosity led me toward health psychology, and then into Marriage and Family Therapy — and I haven't looked back since.

Why Systems, Why Relationships

MFT is, at its core, about systems theory — the idea that nothing we do or feel exists in isolation. We are interconnected with the people around us, the environments we live in, the cultures we belong to, and the bodies we inhabit. I find that endlessly fascinating, and also urgent.

We are living in a world that, in many ways, is not designed for human bodies or human minds. We can't change that world entirely — and honestly, it has a lot going for it too. But we can learn to understand ourselves better within it. We can find ways to live more sustainably, mentally and emotionally. That's what I'm here to help with.

I believe relationships make life worth living — including, and maybe especially, the relationship we have with ourselves.

Military Life, From the Inside

I am a military spouse, which means my specialization in military couples and families isn't academic — it's personal. Military culture is its own world, with its own language, rhythms, and pressures, and it is frequently misunderstood by the systems meant to support it. I came to this work because I live it, and I stay in it because the need is real and the gaps are significant.

Nature, the Body, and Bridging the Gap

I grew up with a deep respect for nature — I'm a mountain person at heart — and I am drawn to ecopsychology and the growing body of evidence around how the natural world heals us. I'm also a person who likes her comforts and has no plans to move into the woods. So the question that drives me is: how do we bridge that gap? How do we bring what nature offers us into the lives we're actually living?

That same spirit carries into my training as an Equine-Assisted Psychotherapist through the University of Denver. The body-mind connection, the relational attunement, the way horses hold up a mirror to what we're carrying — it all points back to the same thing I've always been curious about.

The Road Here

My path has taken me through community mental health, into clinical supervision, and now into the final stages of a PhD focused on mental health clinician sustainability and systemic advocacy. The premise is something I've felt firsthand and seen in the clinicians I supervise: it's not that there aren't enough providers. It's that the system is burning them out and pushing them away. My research looks at how we understand that problem more clearly — and how clinicians can work within and around broken structures rather than being consumed by them.

That feels deeply personal to me. Because sustainability isn't just a research topic. It's a philosophy I try to live.

Outside the Office

When I'm not seeing clients, supervising, or buried in dissertation research, you'll find me in the mountains whenever possible — or at least dreaming about them.

Interested in connecting, collaborating, or booking a speaking engagement? I'd love to hear from you.[Link to contact form]