But maybe you would like to know those all-important credentials:
Educated at Boston College where I studied Psychology and was admitted to the Honors Program.
Graduated with a B.A. in Psychology, summa cum laude, May 2000. Minor in Education (had been on the fence about teaching elementary school versus counseling, counseling won).
After a year working in a blue-collar Massachusetts city with the State Department of Social Services, aka foster care, I attended graduate school at Boston University, studying Clinical Social Work. I was a full-time student, Senior Resident Assistant living on campus supervising kids during a time when the world was highly unstable (school started in August 2001, a few weeks before 9/11).
I was awarded the top internship of that year at the esteemed Boston Children’s Hospital, Inpatient Psychiatry Unit. This unit is the one where they send the really sick kids and teens, so I saw about every kind of mental health condition and learned a ton about clinical diagnosis and intervention.
Received my MSW and a Certificate in Family Therapy in May 2003 and went off to live in Pennsylvania, expecting my first kiddo.
I have worked in home-based counseling, residential, and private practice in Pennsylvania and Florida since 2003. My Florida-based in person and online private practice began in 2013 when I received my LCSW credentials. I added the Registered Yoga Teacher certificate in 2017 and incorporate these principals into my self care, as well as therapy sessions.
My husband Jon and I are raising three amazing teens, plus a big dog and a sweet cat in rural Central Florida. I enjoy hot yoga, gardening, reading literature (not just any kind of books, I have high standards), and anything outdoors and adventurous– hiking, kayaking, camping, rock climbing, mountain biking, skiing, to name a few.
I believe life is meant to be lived to the fullest, and that no matter what cards we may have been dealt (mine were not the best, I’ll always be honest about that), we always have the choice of how we play them.
Why not have fun and be as alive and happy as possible?
Or, as the poet Mary Oliver so wisely asks,
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
