A circuitous route to the work I was meant to do
I took a circuitous path to this career and I think that's part of what makes me good at it. My approach is informed by a background in theater, teaching, public speaking, parenting, voracious reading, and a lifelong love of learning. All my life, I've been drawn to the study of the human experience.
After having my own child, I was blown away by the emotional journey of pregnancy and the postpartum period. At that time I was living in Los Angeles, far away from family. Navigating that time was one of the richest and most challenging times in my life. While I'd worried becoming a mother would be the end of my personal ambitions, it actually awoke within me new curiosities and passions. I became a certified childbirth educator and learned all I could to help others navigate their own transitions. We moved back to South Bend, my hometown, and there I built a busy childbirth ed business, teaching families throughout "Michiana". My students were from diversely differing communities: white collar and blue collar professionals, Notre Dame professors, grad students, and many Amish families planning out-of-hospital births. That range taught me something I've carried into every therapy room since: people from completely different worlds are often sitting with the same fears, the same questions, the same need to feel prepared and understood. While I loved teaching, I wanted even more opportunities to go deep into what it means to be human. A few dear friends and my husband began to suggest I might have an aptitude for counseling. I took one class at IUSB to try it out, read the first chapter of the first textbook, and was hooked. I've been hooked ever since.
I moved to Indianapolis in 2020 and worked in community mental health, including time at a shelter for survivors of domestic violence. That experience taught me, among many things, that the ongoing emotional abuse often haunts people far more than the acute trauma that brought them there. I served clients with complex trauma, anxiety, mood disorders, attachment wounding, ADHD, perinatal challenges, and survivors of interpersonal violence and narcissistic abuse. I am now in full-time private practice in Carmel.