What is felt will complete itself
My story...
at twenty-two, I lost my father to a twelve-year battle with cancer.
As I witnessed him take his last breath, it took my breath away. A loss so deep, it took me to the underworld, where all initiations begin.
Losing my father brought what was buried deep within me to the surface, complex childhood trauma. It was one prolonged spiritual awakening that began in the form of panic attacks and ulcerative colitis that shocked me out of unconsciousness.
I attended one funeral for him, but since then, many of my own. I knew I had survived, but now the work was to trust living again.
I became a personal trainer, collegiate scholar athlete, competitive bodybuilder, and a professional equestrian show jumper. I was groomed by my father at an early age to be an athlete, and while there is a standard of excellence I believe this provided me, it desensitized me from my emotions and my body. Athletic performance became my outlet for the grief I didn’t have the capacity to metabolize. I was grasping for control over.
When control over replaced relationship with, my body gave me the first warning sign, ulcers. By this time I was deep in functional freeze, compartmentalizing, and splitting.
The gap between how I felt and how I appeared, widened. Outwardly high performing, inwardly imploding. My exterior, hardened by perfectionism and repression, exiled my sensitivity, emotionality, and vulnerabilities.
I was perfectly primed for panic to flood me. What felt like random attacks, was actually my body and nervous system demanding me to feel.
It was then that I found my way to yoga. Yoga led me all over the world, stretching as far as India, where I earned 500+ hours of Yoga Teacher Training Credentials. It was through yoga that my chronic GI condition improved and my felt sense of safety came back online.
Yoga provided me the space to slow down, but off of my mat, I was still gravitating towards intensity.
After the loss of my father, I found myself drawn to narcissistic, codependent, and toxic relationships. The stimulation and destruction mirroring the polar extremes existing within me.
It wasn’t until I experienced the love of a gentle man, did I begin to heal. Healing often gets romanticized, but the truth is, the original safety of this relationship called forward the darkest and wounded parts of us.
Safety unfroze longstanding repressed emotions, unlocked corridors of shame, and cut open core attachment wounds.
We didn’t have the capacity, container, or relationship skills to turn volatility into potency. Safety opened us to the irrational unconscious and underworld that we didn’t return from, at least not together. Infidelity was the final rupture that erased the possibility of forever.
At a time when my community was having babies and taking vows, I was acutely aware at 33, I was being ushered onto a completely different path.
The loss of this relationship taught me how sacred heartbreak is and how committed I was to first becoming the partner I desired. This desire led me to study and practice the art of conscious relationships, sacred intimacy, and tantra in Costa Rica.
What was meant to be a one week retreat, turned into a year long heart opening ceremony.
In the jungles of Costa Rica I sat in ceremony with plant medicine, psilocybin and kambo, and began a daily micro-dosing protocol. These allies dissolved layers of somatic protection around my heart.
The simplicity of jungle life, daily beach walks, dips in the warm sea, gatherings at sunset, the wildlife, all contributed to resetting my circadian rhythm. It was the first true break I had away from competitive sports, deadlines and accolades, romantic partnership, and burning the candle at both ends.
It was the first time I felt alive, yet simultaneously relaxed.
What I learned is that aliveness has less to do with stimulation and intensity, and everything to do with discovering your true nature and not going against yourself.
While it was devastating to my nervous system when I made the choice to return home to California, I knew it was time.
I had barely touched down in the states before competitions were back on my calendar, I was accepted into a Doctoral program for Depth Psychology, and I was in relationship.
After a year abroad, it was a great effort to re-establish myself in California. I found a recently renovated home by the ocean, removed my belongings from storage, moved in, and took a deep breath. While my plate was quickly filled, my vitality paralleled it. What I had let go of while in Costa Rica, returned ten fold.
Just as life was beginning to externally match the inner work of my last year, I started to crash.
Within 6 months, my physical and mental health noticeably declined. I was living in a perpetual state of confusion until toxic mold was discovered within the walls.
Long term toxic mold poisoning exposes every underlining health vulnerability you’ve had in your lifespan, including traumas, while also creating new ones. The symptoms were so severe, they mimicked past concussions, panic attacks, ulcerative colitis and food sensitivity, asthma, and widespread nervous system and hormonal dysregulation.
No other chapter in my life stripped me down to pure self doubt like this one. I felt trapped by symptoms, the mental loops they initiated, and an inner fragmentation.
My health recovery began through the coordination of therapy and naturalpathic medicine and the gut wrenching discovery of sensorimotor and health OCD that had been slowly burning in the background since my father passed.
Through deep attuned care I am emerging more whole. I’m returning from what could have turned into chronic illness. My time in Costa Rica serving as a reference point for how good its possible to feel when deep needs are met, and you’re moving through life at the pace of your nervous system.
As I walk towards the threshold of the midlife split, I’m overcome by the synchronicity that my healing has always been about integrating the inner divide between my true self and my feared self. I’m grateful for the challenges that have provided me the privilege of crossing this rite of passage more whole.
While my story is still being written, my work has been profoundly influenced by my lived experiences. What began as anxiety coaching, has expanded into doctoral research on the divided and disorganized psyche, and the role of neuroscience, somatics, and nervous system care in returning to wholeness.
My work is an honoring and continuation of my healing.
It is my deepest offering in this world to guide you on an embodied
Return to you.
Credentials
BA Psychology, Chico State University 2010
MA Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology and Marriage and Family, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2017
Associate Marriage and Family Therapist AM155971, California, 2025-present
PhD in Depth Psychology and Integrative Healing Practices Candidate, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Expected Completion 2028
The Art of Jungian Couples Therapy, PEIS Certification, 2026
Neurobiology of Sex, Love and Attachment, MSTI Certification, 2026
Primal Trust, 2026
Inferential-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, 2026
If my story is of resonance...…
Learn more about my offerings and how I can support you
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Individual
For those stuck in a chronic stress response, emotional whiplash of anxiety and shutdown, and repetition of painful relationship patterns.
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Couples
For the couple locked in power dynamics, incomplete rupture and repair cycles, and shadow projections creating emotional and physical distance.
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OCD
For those trapped in obsessive compulsive loops that reinforce self doubt, confusion, and the search for hidden danger.