How my lifepath led me to you…

There are certain times in life that are known to be significant at the time and others that only show the importance when looking back. I am here to help you discover where you are on your lifepath.

Maybe you are a bit “off course” or somehow ended up on someone else’s path along the way and are here to find your way back to yourself. I am here to help you in that process and it’s only fair that you know a bit about my lifepath to help you know that I am the therapist for you.

Navigating your path through life is truly never done alone. Along the way we find peers, wisdom teachers, challengers and “bad guys.” I also believe we cross paths with other seekers and guides. I very much experience psychotherapy in the realm of the Hero’s/Heroine’s Journey of Joseph Campbell. Some of us maintain our role as the central character in our life story; others of us spend some time as a supporting role when we are designed to be the heroine/hero.

There are curves and bends and places out of sight along the journey. And there are times when it is so dark. Times when we cannot even see our own feet or which way to go in order to move forward. These are the times in life that I believe therapy is essential. The times when we need a guide, to show up with a light and help us find our way through. That is how I see my role as your therapist. I am here to help guide you through the dark and confusion and back to the path that moves you forward on the journey of your life story.

What gives you the credentials to be My Therapist/guide?

I think this is a crucial question…and one that is not often asked when seeking a therapist. And, therapist’s are often cautioned to not share “too much” of their story. But, if you are considering me for your therapist and guide during hard times, I think you should know a bit about how I got to you.

First and foremost, I believe in holism. I would like to go back in time and blow a raspberry at Descartes! The split of Mind, Body and Spirit has created such damage and many lost souls in our history. We all know what it is like to understand something but it still does not change the way our body holds the history. We “get it”, and yet our spirit weeps for the lack of real intimacy and connection. This is why I have spent my life learning how to re-weave the parts of me that modern life split off in childhood and young adulthood. I have the lived-experience to guide you through your process as you re-claim your path forward.

Aren’t you too “New age” to be a legit therapist?

My search for holism brought me to study the spirit initially through astrology and then expanded into other studies that lead me to identify as a solitary pagan practitioner. I trained as a massage therapist and began to learn to see and contact both the pain and wisdom stored in the bodies of the people who I worked with in my therapeutic massage practice. And I studied the mind via formal psychological degrees from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and Naropa University.

Spirit: Astrology and my pagan path

My path started early in elementary school. I was the sixth grader who brought an astrology book (Love, Sex and Astrology to be exact) to class in the Bible Belt. As you might guess it freaked out my teachers and the parents of my classmates. Not only did I bring the “devil astrology” to school but the book also said “sex” in the title. I can laugh about it now, but I can also look back and think “way to go my 11 year old self!”

Finding that astrology book in a clearance bin truly changed my life and gave me a direction that continues to this day. It is what ultimately started me on the path that has brought me to you today.

I devoured the information about being a Scorpio. It was the first moment of “Yes, this feels right. This fits ME!” I realize now that reading about the strengths of being a Scorpio Sun, the ability to rise after dark painful depths of transformation is exactly what I needed to hear at that point in my life. Maybe it created a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If it did, I am eternally grateful because I needed that strength then and throughout many periods in my life. It was that same book that also led me to decide at age 11 that I was going to be a therapist and an astrologer.

The cycles of astrology and the archetypal energies of the astrological bodies make sense to me and for me. I feel them in my life daily. Over time I learned psychological astrology and it changed my relationship to the planets and how I feel the different energies they embody in my life. This is why I offer psychological astrology as part of my psychotherapeutic practice.

There are so many systems of understanding in the world; astrology is one of them and one of the oldest ones. For me, looking at the birth chart as a picture of the relationships of the different archetypes within each of us, having a language to describe those relationships and a methodical way to explore the areas of life impacted by those relationships has been monumentally helpful in learning about myself, my light and my shadows. And I believe it can be helpful to you too.

Astrology was also the gateway to developing my spiritual philosophy and practice. As I learned more about the archetypal energies of the planets, it also brought me into the myths of the ancient Gods and Goddesses. First Greek and Roman as they corresponded with the planets in my chart. Then expanding to include Celtic myths and practices. This is ultimately what opened my perspective and experiences to embrace the neo-pagan path that I continue along today.

Spending the majority of my formative years in more conservative areas, it was a lonely path. This is why I so strongly wanted to “put it out there” to be found by others’ who may be walking a lonely spiritual path currently. I welcome the “spiritual but not religious”, the heathens, pagans, witches, Druids and Wiccans etc. to fully bring your whole self to our sessions at your choice.

the highly sensitive person

When I first learned the term, highly sensitive person or HSP, it was another pivotal fork on my lifepath. Learning both the term and the physiology that is the underpinnings of my life experiences allowed for a huge dose of self-understanding and self-compassion. All my life I had received the messages, both overt and implied: “Calm down. You are overreacting.”, “Toughen up! You are way too sensitive.”, “Stop acting like it is the end of the world.”, “Why do you take everything to heart?” and “Why are you crying?”

I then learned that I am not alone. 20% of the population identifies as highly sensitive. But I find it more helpful to remember, 80% of the population is not HSP. I began to find both gifts in my sensitivity and strengths in my sensitivity. Yes, sappy songs and commercials of smiling babies bring big, wet tears to my face. And I am happy that they do.

Now that I understand my nervous system and how I take in and process information differently than the 80%, I am able to make sense of how I come to different conclusions than many others. I get why I have different tolerance levels and sometimes drastically different experiences than those with me in the same situation. And because of this understanding, I have also arrived at the place of embracing my HSP qualities.

Most importantly, the discovery of being a highly sensitive person allowed me to consciously take the more gentle path at the fork. I know I need more quiet time and rest. I know that I cannot “just muscle through” a lot of the bullshit that others seem to be able to tolerate. I realize that authenticity is vital to my happiness. I need purpose in what I do. I need depth in connection. I can’t “fake it till I make it” because it causes too much damage to my soul.

If you are, or think you may be highly sensitive, you do not need “in your face” therapy. Ripping the band-aid off the wounds is just more trauma and wounding. You need a more subtle experience because you are taking in so much more than the other 80% in the process. I truly believe you need a therapist who authentically understands that you have had a physiologically different lived experience than 80% of the population.

The body and energy body

I still cannot say for certain how I ended up enrolled to study therapeutic massage. I returned from a semester in Scotland in the spring of 2000, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls with my bachelors degree in psychology and moved back to Tennessee in the space of 11 days. Somehow that September, I found myself enrolled at the TN Institute of Healing Arts. Looking back, I am so grateful that I followed the flow and gut guidance that moved my path in that direction.

Training to be a certified massage therapist challenged my relationship with my body. It challenged it in the sense that at the age of 23, I had no relationship with my body. Social messages, family programming and trauma experiences had ensured that my body was simply a vehicle for moving around in the world. I didn’t understand that my body was actually how I experienced the world, perceived the world and filtered the world.

During my massage training I also discovered Reiki and completed my first and second degree Reiki attunements as a form of energy work. We learned about the meridian system and shiatsu points. I learned about chakras and how they function as our bodies’ energy vortices. I began to re-discover that I had a body. I began to feel the physical and spiritual energies that moved through my body with greater depth and intensity. I began to feel grounded in my body for the first time that I could recall.

I learned anatomy and physiology, techniques to soothe, manipulate and break up contracted muscle patterns. And then, one day a brief mentioning during class changed my life. The discussion was related to the common experience of client’s having spontaneous outbursts while on the table. This could be any number of emotions but was attributed to “cellular memory.” Then the lesson concluded with “contain and refer to a trained psychotherapist.” But my mind said, “What is this cellular memory? and Why can’t I be that therapist?”

body-Centered psychotherapy

What is cellular memory and its connection to emotional experience and expression? Why had I never heard any mention of it in my four years of undergraduate study in Psychology? How does therapeutic massage tap into this process? Why can’t I be that therapist? All these questions are what led me to Naropa University in Boulder and to study Somatic Counseling Psychology: Body Psychotherapy.

Naropa is a distinctly different kind of educational experience. It is based in contemplative and experiential educational philosophies. Very different from the mix of my sheltered Mid-Western and Southern bible belt experiences! The admission process included a 3 day intensive experience. Meditation, movement, embodiment practices...reaching into your psyche and soul and putting it out for others to see. I remember sharing the vulnerability during one of my final interviews of the 3 days. “When I came here I kept thinking, “what if they don’t accept me? And for the past three days that has changed to, “Oh my God, what if they accept me?”

My time at Naropa was one of the most challenging of my life. It was also one of the most rewarding, once the dust settled. Three and a half years of meditation, psychological depth work and front and center with cellular memory. My body was going to tell me my own story. All of it. The hurts, the highs, the fears, the anger, the shame, the blame and the strengths of every experience that came in through my senses, my tissues and my cells. Cellular memory meant that everything I had held onto, attempted to block, will into or out of existence by effort alone was still inside the cells of my body.

I cried, moved, breathed and sat with it all. It sucked really. It was beyond hard. But, I had peers on their parallel journey alongside me. And ultimately, I met myself. I can say with heart-felt honesty and compassion that the journey is more than worth the growth pains and walking that thin line of anxiety/excitement of the uncertainty of self-discovery. I had my own therapist and guide to help me make sense of it all. And now it is my role to take up that lantern of light and guide you along your path. Welcome!