Many present-day struggles have their origin in responses to traumatic experiences in the past. While these responses deserve great respect for having kept us alive (physically and/or emotionally), moving from surviving to thriving asks us to recognize that the past is not present. Working together, we can strengthen your ability to stay and feel with what is, rather than continue to respond to the trauma that was. We can gently lay those old trauma responses to rest and find new, healing ways of responding to the here and now.

As an openly gay/queer woman survivor of childhood trauma, I’m experientially informed in my counseling work. I especially enjoy working with parents struggling to interrupt the intergenerational transmission of trauma, whether they are in the pre-parenting, postpartum, early childhood, adolescent, or adult child stage.

In my previous career as a Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies professor and director of a program in Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, I gained a deep understanding of systemic, or sociopolitical, trauma. I hold that healing from systemic trauma can be just as important as healing from interpersonal trauma, and the two are frequently interconnected.