There are so many professional and personal experiences that shape who I am and how I work as a therapist and coach. To name some:

• ADHD and autism: It’s been quite a professional and personal journey to build awareness and skills around neurodivergence! To be aware of how my being autistic has lent itself naturally to having a high percentage of my case load who are also neurodivergent.

• Gender identity: I’ve increased my skills and abilities to meet my gender diverse clients over the years through personal awakening to my own gender fluidity and non-binary identity, through queer connections and community, a gender therapy consultation group, and educating myself. Non-cis people are special and wonderful and I am always grateful when I get the chance to be their therapist or coach.

• Polyamory: Through hard-won skills (hello, jealousy and insecurity management, self) in my own polyamory journey, and necessary education for self and clients, I now serve the polyam community. I get it, the complexities and rewards.

• Parenthood: Becoming a parent helped me build upon all of my experience working in preschools, being a nanny, and working in special education. With clients who are also parents, I’m able to support them in every step of their process. To know what they mean experientially when they say they’re exhausted.

• AEDP: This therapeutic modality and the community of people who practice it has changed my life personally and professionally. As someone who had dabbled in modality after modality, never one for bullshit, I’m shocked and delighted I’ve found my therapeutic home. I love that AEDP lets me really lean into being a full human with my clients. That being explicitly caring is encouraged as healing. I love that it provides a clear frame to support people in changing, and that it is built on the premise that transformation can happen from the get-go.

• Somatic psychotherapy: While some therapies work from the top down—focusing on working with your thoughts and letting that impact you—somatic works from the top down—starting from your experience and letting that percolate up to your thinking self. I decided to enter a graduate program (one of two in the entire country) that works to build connections between the bodily experience and the thinking mind, overlapping systems. I was drawn to this school of thought since the body doesn’t lie, and so. much of our trauma is stored in the body with no narrative connected to it.