My thoughts: I believe that healing happens through wholeness, through connecting and reconnecting with ourselves, the stories we have lived and share, our context in culture and place. So often our connection to life and ourselves is forgotten, frayed or broken. We feel lonely, uncertain, numb, or in pain. The work of therapy as I understand it is attending to the complex webs of connection that make up our lives, learning or re-learning how to feel, see, taste, touch, listen for, remember, speak, imagine, and move into living wholeness. Sensing our way into ourselves is often painful in the broken places, but our psyches and our body have profound and innate knowledge of how to heal. As we align with this knowledge and attend to our lives, we become capable of deep and abiding resilience, spontaneity, agency and vitality.

How I work: I work to create a trusting relationship with each of my clients that serves as a place of strength and safety as well as humor and curiosity. Through staying present and listening deeply, I make space for my clients to hear and feel themselves. This way, the movement and direction of therapy is guided by the inner knowing of each client toward their own wholeness. Trusting this movement gives therapy its strength.

I work with imagery, dreams, body-centered awareness, active imagination, story, artwork and play. My style is intuitive, spontaneous, and gently participative. I incorporate my strong conviction that our context within culture, time and place is inseparable from our inner lives, and must be attended to in therapy.

I am influenced most deeply by Gestalt and Jungian approaches, general systems theory, deep ecology and the work of Joanna Macy. My approach with children and child development is also shaped by having grown up in the Waldorf schools. My understanding of healing is rooted in my experience in gardens and wild places, and with the power of images and story.

My specialties: I enjoy working with anyone who is searching to really live their lives. I especially love working with children and adolescents (individually and in groups), particularly girls on the powerful and often fragile threshold into womanhood.

My background: I have an MA in Integral Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and an MS in Holistic Science from Schumacher College. I did my undergrad in Native American Studies at UC Berkeley. In addition to psychotherapy, I also work as a gardener. A few of the things I love most are: the way more life happens when someone makes a new connection, saving seeds, the relief and joy I feel outdoors, being with friends, water in all of its forms, compost, laughing, and stories.

America - "Earth Sorrow":

America - "Experiential":