Relationship has never felt incidental to me.
I grew up longing for a kind of closeness I didn't yet have words for. Privileged in nearly every way, I was nevertheless starving for what I've come to understand as an essential human nutrient: connection.
My childhood home was in an isolated suburban neighborhood where strangers drove past manicured lawns into their garages and rarely exchanged a glance. My parents were absorbed in work, my siblings were much older, and my extended family lived states away.
Once, when my half-sister visited, she noticed there wasn't a single photograph of a person anywhere in our house.
“Does anyone actually live here?” she asked.
I knew what she meant. And yet I wanted nothing more than to feel deeply connected to the people around me.
I learned to live without.
In school, my friendships became tangled in power struggles, alliances, rejection, and hurt. I participated in dynamics that didn't feel right to me because I wanted to belong. I hurt people I cared about and didn't know how to repair the damage.
Eventually, wanting closeness and not knowing how to find it became too painful.
So I found another solution: I convinced myself I didn't need it.
I became fiercely independent, withdrawing and pushing people away before they could hurt or reject me. Isolation was lonely, but it was also safer.
For a while, I accepted that trade.
But the longing was strong.
College began to crack that protection open.
I started catching glimpses of something different—moments of community, connection, acceptance, challenge, and shared purpose. I hadn't yet found the deep, enduring relationships I longed for, but those glimpses awakened something I'd worked hard not to need.
I wanted people.
I wanted to know and be known. I wanted relationships in which we could challenge and support one another, tell each other the truth, work through conflict, and grow together.
Once I accepted how much I wanted that, I began searching—everywhere I could—for where I might actually find it.
That search took me through community organizing and alternative economics, feminism and social change, spirituality and contemplative practice, theater and music, intentional community and democratic self-governance.
Different as those worlds may seem, I was asking some version of the same question:
How do we create ways of being together in which we can truly belong without diminishing ourselves or one another?
My work found me.
One experience that helped clarify my direction happened in a class exploring Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed.
I had spent years thinking about power, interdependence, and collective liberation. I understood intellectually that our wellbeing is bound together.
Then an exercise made me feel it.
Standing in two circles facing one another, one group embodied “victory,” the other “defeat.” As we held those positions and looked into one another's eyes, something became clear to me:
Our thriving is mutual.
I had known this in my head. Now the knowing was in my body. I saw how powerful an embodied therapeutic experience could be in allowing an insight to become part of who we are.
Meanwhile, in the communities and organizations where I lived and worked, I watched people who cared deeply about one another and shared values of cooperation, justice, and community become caught in conflicts that contradicted those very values.
Knowing how we wanted to be together didn't mean we knew how to actually do it, especially when we were hurt or afraid.
Too often, I watched precious relationships fall apart because we didn't know how to mend them.
I wanted to learn how we mend.
I began to see relationship itself as a place where transformation could happen—where we could not only understand our patterns, but experience and practice new ways of being together and discover how even conflict could become an opportunity for growth.
More than a decade into this work, I'm more convinced than ever of the transformative possibilities of relationship.
I've come to know this territory from the inside out.
Of course, believing in the transformative power of relationship hasn't made all of my own relationships easy. My children, in particular, have shown me how much I still have to learn about power, respect, and boundaries.
I know what it's like for relationships to become so confusing that you begin to doubt your own perceptions, question whether you're asking for too much, or wonder whether everything is somehow your fault.
I know what it's like to be hurt by someone you love, to have your needs dismissed, to tolerate treatment you once believed you never would, and to struggle with the distance between the relationship you long for and the one you're actually living.
And I know the other side, too: the shame of behaving in ways that don't match the person you believe yourself to be. Of hurting people you care about and reckoning with who you can become in your most difficult moments.
But I also know we're capable of more than those moments suggest.
That's one reason I won't require you to clean yourself up before you come through the door.
Perhaps because I know this territory from the inside, I'm not easily scared off by the messiness of relationship. I bring warmth, curiosity, a keen eye for patterns, and a willingness to stay present with difficult truths—without losing sight of anyone's humanity.
I believe you deserve to have your experience taken seriously, your dignity protected, and the harm you've experienced acknowledged.
And I believe you can be challenged without being shamed, held accountable without being reduced to your worst behavior, and supported in finding your own way forward.
Some of the moments that move me most are when something emerges between people that wasn't possible before: vulnerability where there was defensiveness, empathy where there was certainty, accountability without collapse, or a genuine attempt at repair where there had only been blame.
Those moments still fill me with awe.
I've come to believe that something in us wants to heal, grow, and become whole. Our capacity for love, compassion, courage, and humility runs deeper than the patterns that keep us stuck.
Sometimes we just need help creating the conditions for those qualities to emerge.
And I've built a life I love.
The skills I've spent years developing aren't just things I bring to my clients.
They've transformed my own relationships, too. I've learned how to navigate conflict with greater clarity and courage, how to stay connected without abandoning myself, and how to repair when things go wrong.
These aren't just possibilities I believe in. They're capacities I know, practice, and trust.
So these days, you'll usually find me pretty close to home.
I make home-cooked meals for my family, connect with my co-housing neighbors, and sing whenever I can—especially around a fire. I play a handful of percussion instruments, love making things that are both beautiful and useful, and am the handy-gal in my house.
I love long stretches outdoors, away from buildings and technology. I walk and bike when I can. And although nightlife isn't compatible with my life these days, I haven't stopped dancing. Now it's more likely to happen while I'm cooking dinner, cleaning the house, or having a spontaneous dance party with my partner and two kids.
I'm enough of a homebody that my friends sometimes have to be the ones to get me out of my neighborhood.
Perhaps that's fitting.
I spent much of my early life searching for the belonging I couldn't yet name. These days, I'm still learning about relationship, still being challenged by it, and still convinced of its extraordinary capacity to transform us.
I've come to understand human belonging not as somewhere we finally arrive, but as something we create, tend, repair, and return to—with and for one another—again and again.
And I've come to recognize a belonging even more fundamental than the one I'd spent so long searching for.
As I widen my circle of belonging, I'm recognizing myself not only in relationship with other people, but as part of a living world to which I have always belonged. Among our animal and plant kin and within the vast web of life we share, belonging isn't something we have to create or earn.
It's already ours.
Ours to recognize, embrace, and reciprocate through the ways we care for all our relations.
If something in my story resonated with you...
Perhaps you're longing for a different way of being in your relationships, too. One where you can be fully yourself, stay connected through difficulty, and find your way back to one another when things go wrong.
You don't have to know how to get there yet. That's where I can help.
MY TRAINING & EXPERIENCE
My work draws on years of specialized training and experience in relational approaches, including Relational Life Therapy, as well as experiential and embodied practices that support personal and relational transformation.
I am not a licensed mental health clinician. My practice focuses on helping people understand and transform their relationship patterns, rather than diagnosing or treating mental health disorders. If you're seeking diagnosis or treatment for a mental health condition, I encourage you to work with a licensed mental health professional.
Below are some highlights of the training and experience I bring to this work.
EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS
MASTER OF ARTS, DRAMA THERAPY
September 2017
I earned my master's degree from Kansas State University, completing the first half of my studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. For my final project, I used experiential practices and facilitated dialogue to help young adults living in cooperative housing deepen their relationships and become more resilient in the face of conflict.
CERTIFICATION, RELATIONAL LIFE THERAPY
January 2026
I earned my certification through Terry Real's Relational Life Institute after completing an intensive one-year training and passing a rigorous case review. This approach helps people recognize destructive relationship patterns, practice healthier ways of relating, and build relationships grounded in mutual respect and accountability.
REGISTERED DRAMA THERAPIST
April 2023
The Registered Drama Therapist credential is awarded by the North American Drama Therapy Association to practitioners with advanced education, supervised training, and substantial professional experience in drama therapy. Drama therapy uses creative, embodied, and experiential processes to help people explore their inner world, gain new perspectives, and practice difference ways of relating.
CERTIFICATION, SOCIAL JUSTICE MEDIATION
May 2022
Social Justice Mediation is a conflict resolution approach that explicitly examines how social identities, power, privilege, and systemic inequalities shape disagreements. This training deepened my ability to recognize and navigate the dynamics of power and identity that affect all relationships.
EXPERIENCE & COMMUNITY PRACTICE
COMMUNICATION COACH
2012 - Present
My passion for relational recovery was ignited when I was introduced to Nonviolent Communication. Since then, I've studied and taught approaches including Mindful Compassionate Dialogue, Imago Dialogue, and Powerful Non-Defensive Communication. I draw from these models to help people communicate with greater honesty, compassion, and courage.
COOPERATIVE CULTURE EDUCATOR
2006 - Present
Intentional community has been a passion and way of life for me since 2006. I've facilitated countless meetings and taught consensus decision-making, group facilitation, and conflict resolution. This experience informs how I help clients cultivate relationships grounded in transparency, shared power, and mutual respect.
WORKSHOP & GROUP FACILITATOR
March 2014 - Present
I've facilitated group experiences in grief ritual, embodied empathy (Playback Theatre), relational resilience in the face of polycrisis (Work That Reconnects), community-building for intentional community (Authentic Relating), therapeutic drama for troubled teens, and affinity-based exploration of race and privilege. I believe group experiences can create transformations that cannot be possible in one-on-one settings.
COMMUNITY RITUALIST
September 2024 - Present
Following a transformative Year in Ceremony with the Earth Keepers Wisdom School, along with nearly two decades of spiritual practice within several lineages, I offer Earth-reverent, animist, and interfaith song circles, rituals, and ceremonies that nourish community, honor life's transitions, and deepen our sense of belonging.