Shame and stigma can permeate every aspect of our lives and bar us from connections, community, self reflection and joy. It isn’t your fault, though. Shame and stigma come from families, dominant cultures, and other influences that intend to make us small and force us to contort ourselves into a single mold that we cannot fit. Often, these unhelpful influences force us to mask something special and remarkable; talents, identities, passions, ways of living or loving that are unappreciated, misunderstood and even repudiated.

In our work together, we will unburden you from the unwanted and unhelpful influence of these maladies. In their place, we will nurture a self who is free to be different, expressive, complex, imperfect, and worthy of love.

Our stories and ourselves are worthy of dignity and care, regardless of what we learn from the dominant discourse. I believe that deviance and difference should not be requisites for pain and failure; those qualities can be empowering, creative and liberating. I find that what sets us apart can also be our greatest strength. Our differences are not inherently bad or wrong, rather; it is a dominant culture that pulls the veil of shame over our eyes and hearts. 

It has been my life and my personal experiences in navigating stigma that have led me to sit in compassion, curiosity and understanding of my clients. I understand innately the social construction of reality, and how we work within, without and on the fringes of those constructions. My work as a relationship and individual therapist is affirming of all gender, consensually sexual and romantic presentations and identities; my care is swerk/kink/fetish/BDSM/ENM informed (and enthusiastic!) My therapeutic stance is non-judgmental and restorative and my practice is relational. I am trained in EMDR and I specifically focus on attachment-focused EMDR and ego-state therapy which were created to address C-PTSD specifically.

I hope to empower you to live a life that is authentically yours. I am looking forward to helping you find the strength and inner peace in and out of relationships to both advocate for yourself and to be accountable and compassionate towards others, heal and integrate trauma and to take control as the author of your story and architect of your identity.

I have a Bachelor of Arts from the Art Institute of Chicago in Visual & Critical Studies focused on art history through the lens of gender and sexuality, a Master’s in Couple and Family Therapy from Adler University and I am fully trained by the EMDR Institute. I also serve as Adjunct Faculty at Adler University, co-teaching the “Becoming a Kink & BDSM Aware Professional” course.