About Me

2025 update.... Since I am not technically talented,I want anyone at this site to know that the primary model Ihave been working with for the last 7 years is Internal Family Systems and that these days I rarely work with couples. I completed my Level 1 training in 2017 and almost immediately started taking advanced Level 2 trainings and other IFS classes. I became a program assistant for Level 1 and 2 trainings, learning from different trainers, including assisting founder Dick Schwartz twice. I became a certified IFS therapist and consultant in 2020 (?). Since then I have presented several Intros to IFS for the Ithaca community, taught workshops at local institutions, and for the past two years have led a bi monthly IFS consultation group for local therapists. I have been a part of one on one and consultation groups with my colleagues over the years. Through this time I have worked with several IFS therapists doing my own healing work.The impact on my own trauma history and that of my clients has been like nothing I have ever experienced. IFS became and remains the major modality that I use with my clients in my therapy practice because of my experience of its power to facilitate healing. Also, that my photo is me about 20 years ago... :)
I have been a student of psychology since I was a teenager (which was a long, long time ago). I have done counseling informally and professionally throughout my life. I finally received my masters in marriage (relationship) and family therapy from Northcentral University in 2012, fulfilling a life long dream to “officially” become a therapist. In 2012 I also completed an internship as a counselor at the Employee Assistance Program at Guthrie Health in Sayre, PA, where I worked with many individuals, couples, and families. 
I have also completed a year long course in M.E.T.A. (Mindful Experiential Therapy Approaches) which integrates somatic & experiential psychotherapy, applied mindfulness, and interpersonal neurobiology. 

I have a special interest in trauma; how it is stored, triggered, and processed. Professionally, I was a Life Coach for many years, working with both individuals and couples. 

Before that, I was an acupuncturist, working with populations who had many mental as well as physical challenges including homelessness, drug addiction, and life threatening illness. I ran a clinic focused on women's health, and another on detoxification for drug addicts. I also worked at a community clinic whose focus was serving people who were HIV+ and/or had Hepatitis C. 

For several years I also was a midwife assistant, doing home births. I have volunteered at a crisis hotline, a battered women's hotline, and have worked in elementary schools with a child assault prevention project (CAPP). 

In all my work I have learned a lot about being with people where they are, and how to support them to move forward.

Whether through this work, or my personal life as a mother, grandmother, partner, sister, friend, daughter, and granddaughter, my greatest learning has been through my relationships. For me, being in relationship has been the most challenging and rewarding aspect of my life.