About

I have been working in the mental health field since 2017. During my graduate studies, it became clear that it was also necessary to level up (read: root down) the Zen practice element of my life, which I have been doing since 2011. So, I found a spiritual home and teacher, and a few years later ordained as a Zen priest under the tutelage of Rev. Teijo Munnich in the Jikai Dainin Katagiri Roshi lineage of Soto Zen Buddhism. I spent the majority of 2024 training at a Zen monastery in Japan. I've also worked and done lots of other things, from food running and dishwashing at a restaurant to teaching yoga to leading canoeing expeditions to doing racial justice and social liberation work. I say all of this because it is all me and informs my psychotherapy practice.

 

Now, I use an integrated approach to psychotherapy and draw from Buddhist psychology and meditation, Relational-Cultural Theory, the Black Radical Tradition, and Jungian Depth Psychology. Some focuses of mine include supporting adolescents and adults navigating anxiety, depression, relationship issues, identity-based oppression, spirituality/religion, and grief/death/loss. If you are motivated to do your work, go deep, look at yourself honestly (and lovingly), and invite joy, humor, and laughter along the way, then let's get to work!

 

Assuming a life-affirming stance, I am against any framework that stifles, oppresses, or aims to shame life, including colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, heterosexism, and anthropocentrism. Our work together will most likely include an exploration of how these forces of oppression influence your life.​

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I believe that we all contain multitudes and are always whole despite sometimes feeling fragmented, disconnected, alone, lost, alienated, disassociated, and distant. That is where the work of psychotherapy comes in. Through this work, we can become more and more ourselves, more and more connected to our inner and outer worlds, more intimate and loving with the world and the people within us and around us.

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The Medicine of the Great Forest reminds us that we are always connected to all things, even when we are unable to feel that. The trees remind us that we - with all our complexities, fears, harms, quirks, mistakes, and traumas - belong. The mushrooms of the Great Forest show us how to grow through the decay, how to compost the destruction, and to how to love the rot because it too has its place. The mycelium show us that even though we may seem to stand alone, we are deeply and intimately connected to ourselves and to each other, our ancestors (spiritual, blood, and otherwise) and our earth. The sunlight filtering through the leaves teaches us to look up, to remember the vastness of the sky/mind, and to return home to our body and senses. The soil tells us that we are held; we can let go and loosen our grip; we are supported and can ask for help when we need it. The seed helps us to remember that change is a constant and we always have the potential to grow and evolve, releasing outdated patterns of behavior, of thinking, of breathing, of relationships that no longer serve us. The flowers sing to us that our differences and uniqueness are causes for celebration. They hum that our Queerness, our Blackness, our Brownness, our Transness, our age, our mental and physical ability, our spirituality... they're all just right, just as they should be. We are just right. They hum that there is no place and no need for hatred and oppression, whether it be of self or of other, here. The Great Forest is a place of wholeness, of healing; it is a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual place that is a part of all of us.