Welcome! I am a psychotherapist practicing in downtown Milwaukie. I work with individual adults and teens, couples and families.
We typically seek out therapy when something in our life is not working, when we feel stuck, or find ourselves coming up against the same difficulties over and over again without seeing a way through. And often things have been very hard for quite a while when we finally decide to find a therapist. I offer a safe place for you to begin to heal the hurt, disappointment, anger, or whatever is needing this time for support and healing. One guiding principle for me as a therapist is expressed well by the Roman playwright, Terence: “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto” -- “I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.” To share our deepest truths with someone we trust, and to be met by them, begins the process of healing. To connect with another person in this way opens us to the possibility of accepting our true self, and in so doing, opens us to the possibility of being in deeper and more authentic relationship with the others in our life. When we begin to live from this place, we begin living our own, truly authentic life.
I consistently find that our difficulties, our places of discomfort, and our fears can be our greatest teachers, and that, in fact, they offer us a way through to living a more fulfilling and joyful life. It is not easy, but when we are able to meet what challenges us, and stay with it, my experience is that we find our way through. Counseling is a way of helping us face these challenges, and of deepening our awareness of what we are doing in our relationships, in our difficult moments, in struggling to meet our life fully and with our full self. Our work together will focus on helping you come to greater clarity about what you are doing that may be keeping you stuck in negative or unfulfilling patterns in your life and how you can live differently. My goal is to help you find your own way, to live and love with greater awareness, passion and compassion.
