Background

I create kind, brave spaces in which individuals and groups make meaningful change.  As psychotherapist, facilitator and educator, my strengths are to ask thought-provoking questions, provide sharp insights, offer analyses of power and the bigger picture, and to encourage people to tell stories about themselves that are healing and confidence-building. 

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My current work builds on twenty years of experience in the non-profit sector as project manager, support worker, group facilitator, educator, training coordinator, and curriculum designer. In particular, I draw from my experience facilitating feminist group support for women who have survived abuse and running leadership trainings for young people. I have moved multiple health promotion and anti-violence projects from early development through to the evaluation and reporting stage, and consistently demonstrated the positive effects of my efforts. I mentored young people to build self esteem and manage anxiety, depression and anger in order to be more effective community leaders.

I have been facilitating peer-to-peer and youth engagement models for the bulk of my career. My additional subject matter expertise includes gender equity, anti-violence, mental health, homelessness, harm reduction, HIV/Hep C, poverty, leadership development, anti-oppression, group process, and community- and resilience-building. More recently, my interests have shifted into burnout prevention and intervention, healing relational trauma and insecure attachment, nervous system regulation, and building self-esteem, self-worth, and self-compassion.

As an integrative psychotherapist in individual sessions with teens and adults, I draw from psychodynamic, narrative, humanist, and cognitive-behavioural (CBT) modalities. My clients are dealing with burnout, rejection sensitivity, ADHD, people-pleasing, oppression, anxiety, depression, and childhood traumas.

The frameworks and approaches I integrate into my work are the social determinants of health, anti-oppressive practice, intersectional feminism, and community development. I am strengths-based and trauma-informed. As an educator, I incorporate art, theatre games, discussion, presentation and experiential learning.​​​​​