I specialize in working with individuals who want to live authentically, need help learning how to set boundaries, the LGBTQIA+ community, and those who have been impacted by incarceration. In case that didn’t give it away, I try not to take myself too seriously. I’m a q***r, divorced, cis-woman who grew up in Pennsylvania, and after hopping around the East Coast a bit, I first moved to Idaho in 2007 to attend Boise State and have called it home ever since. I continue to live in the Treasure Valley with my partner and our four-legged family. I’ve always been a little bit weird, and learned to lean into that weirdness and become my authentic self as an adult. Allowing myself to live authentically, learning how to set appropriate boundaries and communicate assertively, and being comfortable with the idea that it would mean some people wouldn’t like me was one of the hardest and most important journeys I’ve been on. To celebrate my 40th birthday, I gave myself a present I’d been thinking about for ages-I got my hands tattooed. “Job killers,” so they say. But I realized the places that wouldn’t hire, or people who wouldn’t want to work with me because of my tattoos or my brightly colored hair, wouldn’t be a good fit to begin with. Over the years, many hobbies took up most of the time, from roller derby to needlefelt. Currently, you can usually find me at a poker table, playing with my dogs, snuggling with a pig, or binge-watching really bad movies on one streaming service or another. Philosophically, I am liberal, s*x (and s*x worker) positive, and body positive; I believe Black Lives Matter, love is love, trans* rights are human rights, science is real, and there are equal rights for all. As a counselor, I have worked in multiple settings. I have done routine outpatient therapy both in a community mental health agency and virtually, worked in an acute mental health hospital, and worked in both juvenile and adult correctional facilities. I have created trainings and presented at conferences on various topics, including risk and resilience factors in LGBGTQ+ youth, how to provide gender-affirming care to gender-nonconforming individuals in difficult settings, and how to integrate DBT practices into routine care for incarcerated adolescents. Probably the coolest thing I’ve been lucky enough to do is act as the Mental Health Expert on the state’s Crisis Negotiation Team for about 4 years. Yes, that means I was a trained hostage negotiator. In my former life, I worked in retail, waited tables, taught a few English classes at Boise State, published some poems and essays, and had a stint in fast food once upon a time. I have worked with, and continue to be comfortable working with, people from all backgrounds.
