I am the founder and director of The Center of Connected Living- Fl, South Florida’s location for optimal mental and emotional health. As a marriage and family therapist, I believe that relationships play an integral role in our happiness and well-being. Many of our challenges can be used as opportunities for claiming and creating our best lives. I work from a strengths-based perspective; honoring the past, working with the present moment, and focusing on the future. I do believe that relationship problems are influenced by our past, but that the past doesn't have to predict the future. Within a couple, for instance, the perception we have of our partner's behavior can be the catalyst for incredible personal and relational growth. I draw great inspiration from yoga, buddhism, nature, and family systems ideas along with a strong interest in the mind-body-spirit connection, couple relationships, adolescent self-esteem, and individual self-growth. In the past five years I've co-published three articles; one about couples and power dynamics; another about the quarter-life crisis; and a narrative therapy-based article with her colleagues. Since 2009, I've had the opportunity to be the family therapist expert on my shrink.com, a site for holistic mental and emotional health. Part of this role involves answering client questions, writing articles and sharing passion for family therapy. My expertise is in running groups with a dissertation centered upon five 'at-risk' adolescent girls in a multicultural middle school group setting. This research revealed startling conclusions about the way we think of adolescence and the position that we take as adults when we work with this population. I've worked with an agency in New York, as well as local mental-health community agencies as a consultant to foster and adoptive families in Broward County, along with several years as a career counselor using family therapy ideas at a major local university. In years prior to becoming a therapist, I worked as a preschool teacher, gaining insight and experience of child development and family dynamics at this stage in the family life cycle.