People often tell me I’ve lived so many lives. I think they see me this way because the standard is to hone a few skills and settle in. Society also makes it difficult to try myriad paths without losing any status, position, or savings we gain by staying in one lane. And even internally, we develop a sense of who we are (our self image), and it feels terrifying to abandon this portrait.

I was raised in the midwest and left for art school in New York (Pratt Institute, Brooklyn) against the wills of my family. After finishing a BFA in fine arts (printmaking), I moved to Buffalo and studied art conservation, art history, and then pre-med while touring with bands and making album covers. I was awarded a paid internship at the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian in D.C. where I restored Native artifacts and worked with tribal members to repatriate objects. I then interned at a monastery in Connecticut where I learned leatherwork, weaving, beekeeping, cow milking, animal husbandry, tractor driving, haying, and chainsawing. I felt new strengths in ways I’d never imagined. I decided to enter this monastery and was an enclosed nun in full, medieval habit for 6 years. When I decided to leave, the abbess asked me to care for the land, animals, and guests at a remote island monastery in Washington State.

I transitioned into becoming a nonprofit farm manager before finding where all of these paths had lead me: to a three-year masters in mental health counseling and relationship therapy. I graduated with a 4.0 and over 1,000 hours of seeing clients. I passed the NCMHCE licensure test on my first go… during surgery and treatments for breast cancer. I work/worked for community mental health agencies and private group practice. And through all of this, I saw the hardships caused by the stacks of regulations and insurance companies. Clients spent months waiting to be seen and then had piles of paperwork each session that had little to do with helping their causes. It can feel constricting and stagnant.

In this new domain, I come bearing all of the skills from all of these “lives,” and I am able to share them freely and intuitively. Though I will not be diagnosing or providing “therapy”, I will be engaging with you in relationship to excavate parts of your beauty that have become encrusted with the barnacles and salts that come from navigating this grueling world.

I am mars - as is. Come as you are.