I believe we all want ourselves and one another to be well, but that fear will often keep us from acting from that place. I believe that people are fundamentally good and that we mean well, but that our potentially misguided strategies can sometimes lead us to harmful behaviours.

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I believe that peer-based mental health interventions are a critical key to community wellness. By giving people the skills to help themselves and one another, we all become empowered, connected, and able to not only overcome the inevitable obstacles, but to thrive in the face of them. This is true within partnerships, family systems, as well as workplace teams, organizations, and larger community level groups.

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Through my work with people living at the margins, who have faced elevated rates of discrimination, oppression, and barriers to affirming care, I have witnessed first hand in my own experiences and my work the ways that the current approach to a more socially just and equitable work isn't working. I believe that once people know better, they often do better, but that often contemporary language around social justice, as well as diversity and inclusion initiatives, leave people feeling alienated, shamed, or unable to meaningfully engage.

 

My work seeks to foster a motivation towards inclusion, even from those who seem most resistant, by identifying shared values of community, belonging, and care. I do this by making participants feel heard in their priorities and needs and relating them back to accessible strategies for change that are easily understood, easily implemented, and within reach of anyone who wishes to help create a brighter future for us all.

 

I welcome any and all feedback from clients, collaborators, and co-conspirators, as these are further invitations for me to grow in my own awareness and offerings of an affirming practice.

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My work is informed by researchers and thinkers such as Bonnie Burstow and the field of critical psychologies, emergent organizers and brilliant Black movement dreamers like adrienne maree brown, Audre Lorde, and Lama Rod Owens, as well as my formal training in internal family systems (IFS), anti-oppressive practice, transformative justice, radical accountability, motivational interviewing, adult learning styles, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), transpersonal psychology, attachment theory, and polyvagal theory. I also have extensive training and lived experience in the field of sexual health, 2SLGBTQIA+ realities, polyamory and consentual non-monogamy, and relationships of all descriptions.