For most of my adult life, I was the logistics department of a family. Two daughters, a full calendar, a car that always smelled faintly of someone's cheer shoes. I could tell you every shoe size, every allergy, every practice time in a two-county radius. I was good at keeping everyone. Somewhere in there, like a lot of the women I now sit with, I quietly stopped keeping myself.
For over twenty years, I also managed a multi-office dental practice alongside my dad, the practice owner and dentist, and his associates. I know what it means to hold a business, a team, and a family at the same time, and to be the person everyone comes to when something needs solving.
Then came a divorce I did not plan for, a rebuilding I did not feel ready for, and a question that would not leave me alone: who am I, apart from what everyone needs from me? I know that question from the inside. It is the reason my practice looks the way it does.
I went back to graduate school in midlife and earned my master's degree in clinical mental health counseling. I did it while mothering, working, and rebuilding a life, which taught me something no textbook could: change is possible, it is rarely comfortable, and it is worth it.
My training, briefly
I hold a master's degree in clinical mental health counseling and practice as a Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern under the supervision of Angela Hawke, LMHC, which simply means an experienced licensed counselor reviews my work as I complete Florida's licensure requirements. I am a member of the American Counseling Association and the Florida Mental Health Counselors Association, and my profile is verified on Psychology Today.
How I actually work
In session, we start with your story: the marriage that ended, the kids who grew up, the job that empties you, the anxiety that will not name itself. Then we work with what is underneath it: what your nervous system learned during the hard years, and the old programs it keeps running long after the chapter has changed. This part of the work is often the most powerful. Nervous system regulation is the difference between understanding why you feel what you feel and actually beginning to feel different.
The frameworks I reach for most are ones with real evidence behind them: the window of tolerance for understanding why you swing between wound-up and shut down, affect labeling for taking the charge out of overwhelming feelings, and the growing research on self-compassion, which is not about being softer on yourself for its own sake, but about the measurable fact that people change more readily from acceptance than from shame.
Sessions with me are warm, direct, and occasionally funny, because I am, and because laughter is regulation too. You will never get a script. You will get a trained counselor who has also lived some of what you are living.
A few true things about me
I am the mother of two grown daughters who are my favorite people and my very best teachers. My happy place is being in the Carolinas. The mountain lake photo on my psychoeducation page is mine, taken from an overlook I return to as often as I can. I am still, in midlife, relearning my own coffee order after years of only knowing everyone else's. Faith is part of my own story; if it is part of yours, it is welcome in the room, and if it is not, this is still fully your space.
Who I work with
Some of the women I work with are 27 and wondering why the life they were told to want feels like a costume. Some are 35 with small kids, a career, and a running list where their own name never appears. Some are my age, meeting the quiet after the kids grow up, or starting over after a marriage ends. The seasons look different. What sits underneath them is remarkably similar: a woman who has been holding a lot, for a long time, and who is ready to be more than what everyone needs from her.
If that is you, at any age, I would be glad to meet you.