I believe we all want ourselves and one another to be well, but that fear will often keep us from acting from that place. Where capitalism and isolationism keeps us from one another and feeling in competition with each other, where prejudice and microaggressions continue to wear down one’s self confidence and sense of worth in the world, and even when accepted pathways to healing - like psychotherapy and western medicine in general - often leave these people feeling more traumatized, more stigmatized, and more unwell, we need a new solution.

 

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.

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I believe healing to be a birthright, that communities are the most qualified and best suited to help themselves, and that disrupting the current oppressive and stigmatizing approach to mental health can help us understand that which makes us unwell, by contextualizing ourselves within the contemporary realities that thrive on us staying unwell. By addressing the severe inequities in access to healing spaces and lack of liberatory frameworks of mental health, I believe that we can more radically transform what that healing can look like and find lasting, collaborative solutions that bring wellness to all of us - as a larger, planetary collective.

 

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 mental health is failing. I work from a trauma-informed lens that de-centers the DSM and celebrates neurodiversity and creative adaptations. My approach is person-centered and seeks to expand the tools available to you to foster your own wellness, without stigmatizing or demonizing the tools you may have used thus far to keep yourself alive and surviving. 

 

Additionally, the ways in which the psychiatric institution operates as an extension of the carceral state is well documented, and those who are licensed psychotherapists are bound by the conditions of their licensure to involve the police under certain circumstances. I practice as a non-licensed counselor, not a psychotherapist, and as such I am able to offer services within my abolitionist values and I do not involve the police whatsoever in my practice. 

 

After an initial consultation, if we decide to work together, you will be asked to provide a list of 3-5 individuals in your life who can serve as emergency contacts in the case of a personal or medical emergency. These relational resources will be used in lieu of police in the case of an emergency. Additionally, you will be provided with a list of three individuals with whom I work in active accountability processes with, whom you are able to provide feedback, complaints, or concerns to if addressing them with me personally does not feel accessible to you.

 

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.

 

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), motivational interviewing, Jungian depth psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), transpersonal psychology, attachment theory, polyvagal theory, and psychedelic integration. I have been studying astrology and the tarot for over 20 years and integrate much of these larger systems, patterns, and archetypal energies into my approaches. I also have extensive training and lived experience in the field of sexual health and erotic sexualities, 2SLGBTQIA+ realities, polyamory and consentual non-monogamy, and kink.