Much of what I’ve learned and do and love is not quantifiable. For the quantifiable, I have a BA in Human Services with a Chemical Dependency Emphasis, from Fairhaven College, held a Substance Use Disorder Professional Trainee license for six years (now inactive), am a Whatcom Hospice Volunteer, have trained under numerous teachers through the Foundation For Shamanic Studies, and am a legally ordained minister. I have worked with a variety of populations, including addicted, homeless, incarcerated, foster students and local tribal members.

While my license as a Certified Counselor denotes a level of education and knowledge that allows me to help and not harm, I think my lifelong curiosity and enquiry into what are often called alternative healing methods is as important to who I am, and what my outlook is, as that education – perhaps more so. A long life does not automatically grant wisdom – no brownie points for just surviving. No, like everything else you want to become good at, you have to work at it. In my seventh decade I can look back on a plethora of experiences and schooling, from my very first dance training with the Royal Ballet as a young child, the first holistic body work I encountered in the early ‘70s – the Alexander Technique – and continued with Rolfing, Healing Touch, Reiki, cranio-sacral and more, through my ongoing training as a shamanic practitioner, to many kinds of counseling and therapy, from Adlerian to One Brain Integration, using hypnotherapy to overcome stubborn obstacles, a list that goes on and on and is still growing. I am eternally curious about everything.

I believe in our innate strength, and the ability, with a little help, to heal and become whole again. “Hope,” the poet Emily Dickinson said, “is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.” Hope is, perhaps, the most powerful thing I have to offer, a way I can help you realize the person you want to be, and know you can be. As a somatic practitioner, I want to hear you, and we will talk, but then we will move beyond the story and into the body and intuition. How do your senses help you come back to yourself? Where in your body do you feel your feelings? Where do you feel stuck? When appropriate, and with your permission, our work will be physical, perhaps expressed in a dance, or listening keenly to music or just a tone, inhaling a fragrance with eyes closed, inhabiting our hands and fingers, and drawing our sensations.

This may all seem novel to you; I call it non-traditional counseling. If it sounds like something you would like to explore, please contact me by phone or email to schedule a free 15 minute consultation.