My Story

My journey began in a home where chaos was normal.

Here, I learned that expressions of anger and shame were acts of love. Growing up in this environment, I learned to embrace anger; it kept me safe and protected – and I depended on it for survival. And it only grew deeper when, at 13 years old, I lost the only person whom I shared these childhood experiences with.

From there, I unknowingly built a narrative about the world:

Life is unfair.
People are untrustworthy.
I can count only on myself.

To get through life, a part of me held up a facade; one that would keep me away from confronting my reality. That he was gone, and I was alone.

I had built an armour that kept me safe.

But, like two sides of the same coin, the very thing that protects us can also hurt us the most.
I was detached from the world, others, and many times, with myself. It was isolating and exhausting. Often, the wash of loneliness that took over my body was paralyzing and scary.

I started to wonder if life was always going to be like this and I grew curious:

What was all of this armour for?
Who was I protecting?
Who am I without the armour?

My journey was one of unmasking – of rediscovering who I was at my core, without all the layers of armour that had been so necessary during my childhood. I realized there was peace in reclaiming the parts of myself I’d had to disown and turn away from – it allowed me to embody myself wholly.

So now I walk with others, on their journey of rediscovery and reclamation. Using an integrative, trauma-informed approach that incorporates both mind and body-based psychotherapies, I help clients go beyond recovery from what was to discovery of what’s possible.