I’m a California-raised poet turned therapist, a mom, and life-long Buddhist practitioner from the Zen tradition. Before I was a therapist, I gravitated towards the healing arts field through poetry workshops with youth, women, sexual abuse survivors, and unhoused folks. Lecturing in university classrooms, I found trauma in the pages of my students’ creative writing and artwork. The classroom became a community where folks could connect, grieve, process, and build strength and confidence through post-traumatic growth and resilience. Moving into the field of trauma-focused therapy felt like a natural progression, moving away from “the narrator” and toward the individual. My trauma-focused trainings include EMDR Training, a certificate in Mindfulness, Non-Violent Parenting Strategies, and Trauma Focused CBT. Having come up in the literary world, I also practice Narrative Therapy and Expressive Arts, integrating modalities to meet the needs of the person before me.