I grew up in St. John’s, Newfoundland spending childhood summers both in town and around the bay, in the woods and on beaches in Conception Bay North, where I learned to love the trees, water, birds and other critters of the Earth. As a teenager I had the privilege of participating in the early years of Sound Symposium – a new music and sound event founded by percussionist, teacher and cultural leader Don Wherry (1935-2001) and his wife Kathy Clarke Wherry who continues the event today. I attended workshops with significant new music and interdisciplinary artists whose work had a formative impact in my life, feeding my own embodied sense of inquiry and play and introducing me to the ways of Deep Listening and improvisation.

After years living and studying in Montreal and San Francisco I returned to St. John’s in 1997 where I continued raising my son, then 5, as a single parent.

In 2007 I experienced a serious car accident that changed my body and nervous system. I lived with chronic pain and physical limitations for several years. A big part of this learning was slowing down. I also live with asthma which has led to a deep curiosity about the physiology, mechanics, experience and meanings of breathing. Through these challenges, I have been guided on a path towards deeper congruence in my life and work, as illness and injury became my teachers.

In 2016 I launched Resonance to focus my energy on offering individual therapy for adults, as well as group work including retreats and listening walks. Research interests have included my doctoral inquiry into climate change experience, loss, threat, and adaptation, and how to support persons and nervous systems to engage creatively, and in ways that move towards greater ecological and social justice.

Continuing my interdisciplinary artistic practice, I have had the privilege of ongoing  collaborations with other artists – writers, dancers, theatre artists and musicians–  offering a somatic and spiritual care approach to creative process, dramaturgy and production.

Everything changed in September 2019, when my only son, Cyrus, died by homicide at the age of 27. Since that time I have been forced to renegotiate most aspects of my world in relation to this loss that has changed my heart, mind, and body. I felt myself both falling into and buoyed by a field of grace and compassion that came for me and caught me and has held me through days and weeks, and years of grieving. It has not been easy, but I now have a new relationship with my son in spirit and a deeper sense of connection here in this natural and built world. The restorative role of mourning has been, and continues to be critical for me as a therapist, in my own loss and also amidst the tensions of losses in our world. Losses like climate change, and bearing witness to genocide and the rise of fascism. Dine’ (Navajo) elder, Pat McCabe, says; “[e]xpressing grief has always been a cathartic experience and a rebalancing mechanism, and I believe it is a part of building the foundation for any new story we might want to tell.”

As in life, my psychotherapy practice begins with listening and returning to body wisdom. I have cultivated these ways through my own challenges and struggles and the blessings of life’s journey. I have had wonderful teachers, friends, and community support along the way. Some of my most important early teachers include Lee Saunders, Ian J Grand, and Don Hanlon Johnson. More recent decade teachers include Berns Galloway, Peter Levine, and Aline Lapierre.

I work with a range of clients who have faced challenging and traumatic experiences, complicated grief, and those suffering with a range of losses- from the loss of a loved one, to relationship, career and identity transition, and health-related transitions. My work is grounded in neuroscience and physiologically informed body psychotherapy, and psycho-dynamic work exploring embodied personal and cultural narratives. I do my best to provide care that is grounded in anti-oppressive principles and practices. To me this means celebrating gender and cultural identities and neurodiversity. It also means recognizing and resisting embodiments of systemic oppression, ongoing colonization, racism, genocide, and gender-based violence as we move and adapt together in a precarious world.

I live in the woods at Maddox Cove, looking out over Motion Bay, near St. John’s, Newfoundland.