ABOUT ME

At the heart of my work is a simple belief: people are not problems to be solved. Our nervous systems adapt in brilliant ways to help us survive, and healing begins when we finally have the space to understand those adaptations with compassion. Our adaptations, after all, are usually protecting the very gifts and sensitivities that make us who we are. I’ve always been a helper and a feeler, and over time I’ve uncovered the embodied gift beneath the protective role it was sidelined into for survival in childhood.

 

My work in the mental health field began as a registered nurse on an acute psychiatric unit, where I was responsible for coordinating care and supporting people in some of the most destabilizing and misunderstood moments of their lives. I met people who were traumatized, overwhelmed, dissociated, grieving, or simply trying to survive circumstances no one had ever prepared them for. 

 

Being in that environment showed me a side of mental health care that most people never see—the complexity, the raw humanity, and the significant gaps in how our systems respond to suffering. It clarified for me the need to understand the nervous system outside of pathology, to see it as a body doing everything it can to protect the person living inside.

 

From there, I first stepped into a career as a therapist in a long-term in-patient addictions treatment unit, leading CBT, DBT, and PTSD groups for people in the earliest, most destabilizing stages of recovery. It was raw and deeply fulfilling work. 

 

Those early years taught me so much more about survival strategies and how fiercely the body protects us. Addictions treatment does incredible, often life-saving work — and it also made something clear to me. We were helping people stabilize, cope, and adapt, yet the deeper trauma driving those adaptations often remained untouched. 

 

As I grew in my own healing, I started to see how many clients were being supported to survive but not necessarily given the space or the relational safety needed to truly heal. That realization shaped the direction of my career and the kind of therapist I saw myself becoming. 

 

From there, I took a risk by moving across the country for a job as a primary therapist at a trauma treatment centre well known for its research and innovation. My days involved complex case management, collaborating with community teams, and supporting clients whose lives didn’t fit neatly into diagnostic boxes. I helped build curriculum for DBT, family trauma-education, and trauma-focused psychoeducation. I worked 1:1, in small and large groups, and in lecture halls—holding space for the many different shapes trauma recovery can take.

 

As my clinical work became more specialized, my own healing was also maturing. I was beginning to understand the systems I worked within not just as a clinician, but as someone who had navigated trauma personally. I could see the gap between what institutions wanted to offer and what trauma survivors actually needed: relationship, context, nuance, and voices that didn’t get flattened into paperwork.

 

Even the strongest organizations are vulnerable to systemic failings, and I realized I couldn’t practice the way I wanted to (slow, relational, intuitive, grounded) inside a model built for efficiency and risk management. My own healing kept pulling me toward work that honoured the complexity of people’s lived experience, including my own.

 

Leaving the healthcare world was less a career move and more an alignment. I wanted to build a practice where trauma survivors weren’t treated as less capable, less reasonable, or inherently unstable, but as whole people whose feelings and adaptations made perfect sense.

 

Private practice has allowed me to integrate everything—my formal training, my clinical experience, and the inner work that continues to shape me. I now practice within the RRP community, alongside trusted mentors and colleagues who share my values of embodied relational healing. I get to work in a way that reflects the truth I’ve learned over and over again: healing happens in safe relationships, and people change most when they feel understood, respected, and met with real humanity.