“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything.

Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”

​― Paul Coelho
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What if.....
we are not broken?

What if instead, we saw that we are cut off? Cut off from our true selves, each other, and the cosmos itself?


And what if... there is a way back? So that we can learn how to grieve all this grief, how to make beauty from our ashes and how to find our many ways home?  What if joy and community is a birthright? What if we could settle in and rest and laugh and play together again?

​This is what I crave. Maybe you crave it too.


A little about my Education & Expereince

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This is my life’s work and I love it.

I was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada (Southern Paiute, Mojave territory) and always found myself longing for the lushness of the rainy Pacific Northwest. In 1997, that longing was fulfilled when I moved to a small seminary in the Cascade foothills to study Theology. After my education, I served in amazing communities such as the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation and the Atlantic Street Center in Rainier Valley working with a diverse population including Muslim refugees from the Ethiopian-Eritrean wars. I also served at University United Methodist Church in Las Vegas where I worked as a Minister. 
I graduated from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology with a Masters in Counseling in 2006. Today, I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, a Children’s Mental Health Specialist, an Ethnic Minority Mental Health Specialist and a Clinical Supervisor. I am certified as a Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapist through the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault, and Reactive Attachment Disorder Therapy through the Annie M. Casey Foundation and as Level I Sensorimotor Psychotherapist through the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute. 

That all means I am trained & experienced to work with people and their nervous systems who have survived multiple traumas including chronic marginalization and yet continue to seek peace. 


Life Experience

As a therapist, my own experiences of pain and loss bring understanding to my work with my clients. My own path has had a fair share of triumphs and mistakes. 
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I have lost one parent to addiction, and the other to chronic illness and untimely death, and I know what it feels like to largely have raised myself. Honestly, I' still am, and with love. 
I have been to the funeral of beautiful friends who were taken by violent relationships. 
I know what it means to be un-housed, and to have that constant, lingering worry that it might happen again.
As a light-skinned phenotypical black woman I know what it is to never really have any sense of place or belonging and I am learning how to create that sense of home that comes from within.
I've responded to the meanness and cruelty of the world by becoming anything but myself, and learning to make amends to all those beautiful parts of myself I had to leave behind to survive.

I’ve lost my faith only to find it again in very, VERY unexpected places.   

Yet today, I have a loving home & family and I'm doing the work that I love and was made for in my longed for Pacific Northwest. I know that I came alive as I grounded myself in my spirituality and let true, good people enter my life. I seek to bring that experience to each of my clients. 

Just like mine... 
...your experiences are unique and they are ever speaking to you.
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Press
A few years ago, while doing non-profit work, I was fortunate enough to be featured in the Seattle Times alongside one of my clients. Feel free to read about our work together here: The Seattle Times 


Additional Skills
Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (through Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Trauma)
The Disruptive Behavioral Intervention Model for Attachment Challenged Children (through the Casey Foundation)
Alternatives For Families-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy aka AF-CBT (through Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Trauma)
Group Therapy for Domestic Violence Survivors (through Domestic Abuse Women’s Network or D.A.W.N.)
Level I Sensorimotor Psychotherapist through the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute
IFS Therapy with Dr. Richard Schwartz, Sedona Arizona.


Community Outreach
2005 Trinity Lutheran College: The Causes and Implications of Homelessness among Women and Children
2007 Sound Mental Health: Using Expressive Therapy for PTSD Survivors
2008 Sound Mental Health: Art Therapy for Severe and Persistent Anxiety and Depression
2010 Franklin High School Youth Summit: “What are You?” Being Multiracial in the New Millennium (With Paula Womack)
2012 & 2013 (S)ending Retreat, Seattle School of Theology and Psychology
2012 Garfield High School: How to Recognize, Prevent & Stop Dating Violence for Teen Girls (with Caroline Plummer)
2011-2014 Alumni Quad Member, Seattle School of Theology and Psychology
2015 Peace Community Center:Panelist - Youth Vocational Workshop
2015 Alumni/ Faculty Core Curriculum Workshop - Seattle School of Theology and Psychology
2016 Annie Wright Schools - Anxiety and Transitioning into College
2016 Pacific Lutheran University - Understanding and Treating Borderline Personality Disorder
2018 You Grow Girl!!- Becoming a True Ally in an Age of Change
2020-2021 Rest & Resilience: A BIPOC space to help navigate rest in a time of upheaval (with Shariah Hunt & Piya Banarjee)
2021- Present: Rotating Co-Facilitator for WE-Black collective
2022 Internal Family Systems Training with Dr. Frank Anderson in Sedona Arizona (Attendee)
2002 Solfire We-Lab Spiritual Facilitator for Healing Racialized trauma (Eugene Oregon)
2022 Solfire We-Lab Spiritual Facilitator for Healing Racialized Trauma (Whidbey Institute, Washington)
2023  Evergreen State College (Tacoma) "Calling In the Beloved Community, a celebration of Dr. King" Ancestral Healing Guide,
2023 Grand Cinema, "Exterminate All the Brutes" - Panelist for Coleman & Associates (Tacoma, WA).
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I love working with people. I look forward to working with you.

~ (253) 397-9535 ~



​
 A Great Wagon, Rumi, 13th century Persian Poet & Sufi Mystic

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.
Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense...
The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep!
You must for ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.  The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep!
 
Come to the orchard in Spring
​There is light and wine and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.