A little more background.

My undergraduate work was in English Literature with a concentration in Women’s Studies at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where I graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1988. I spent the next year waiting tables in Aspen so I could get a free ski pass. Then I moved to Boulder where I studied contemplative psychotherapy at Naropa University and creative writing at the University of Colorado. I also, for two glorious years, performed poetry, choreographed, and danced as part of VOX FEMINA, a women’s performance arts organization, and then took off for a very extended trip to Southeast Asia. My most poignant memories include the near daily consumption of fried sweet potatoes, the other-worldly clang of gamelan music played during all-night religious rituals, hot black sand beaches in Java, surviving Dengue Fever while in a Batak house in Sumatra, and hiking through a forest of Rhododendrons in full bloom in the Himalayas. To this day, I still miss the sound of flip flops and the smell of rice in the air.

I moved to Texas to go to graduate school, ditched my Sorels for cowboy boots, and quickly learned about air conditioning. In 1996, I received my Master’s of Science in Social Work (MSSW) with a concentration in Mental Health and Chemical Dependency from the University of Texas at Austin.

As a first year student, I interned at Austin Family House, a halfway house for women in early recovery from substance use disorders, where I provided residents with skills building classes, group therapy, and connections to community resources. My second year internship was on the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Unit at St. David’s Pavilion where I discovered my absolute passion for working with kids and families and received some of the best clinical supervision of my career. I soaked up everything I could from the top-notch interdisciplinary clinical team - the social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, and the music, art, and recreation therapists. Upon graduation, I was awarded membership in the honor society Phi Kappa Phi and was hired by St. David’s Pavilion, where I later became the director of the psychiatric unit where I had been an intern. I like to call these years at the hospital “my residency,” which was set to a soundtrack of pagers (!!), relentlessly ringing phones, hospital-wide code announcements, and the kids singing 90s hits (Kiss from a Rose by Seal anyone?)

On the unit, I spent the bulk of my time doing clinical intervention. I facilitated a daily psychotherapy group for the adolescents as well as a separate, more skills-based group for the younger kids, and about five family therapy sessions per day. It was pure heaven, despite feeling like the opposite sometimes. I learned to think about psychiatric symptoms in the context of micro and macro social systems and intervened with strategies drawn from Psychodynamic, Existential, and Family Systems Theory, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Ross Greene’s Collaborative Problem-Solving Model.

I credit my years at the hospital, and the generosity of my many mentors, for honing my skills in case conceptualization, how I understand psychic suffering, the value and limits of psychiatric medication, and the power of authentic human connection.

Not long after leaving the hospital, I started Creekside Mental Health, an interdisciplinary group practice with Dr. William Streusand, a Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist, which prioritized the treatment of children, adolescents, and families. At that time, I was still immersed in the study of Family Systems and Psychoanalytic Theory, the latter of which no human could learn in a lifetime. I graduated from Carol Middelberg’s two-year post-graduate clinical training program on Couple and Family Therapy in 2008 and was the President of Austin Psychoanalytic in 2009, where I also served on the Board from 2008-2010.

Around this time, the field experienced a seismic shift brought on by Attachment Theory and research which, in part, drove the creation of a science-driven way to understand and advance mental health called Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). Dan Siegel, MD, who coined that term, wrote the book The Developing Mind: How Relationships and The Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are which laid out the basis for IPNB and truly rocked my world. I read it in a study group and was intellectually on fire with its core theories and the implications for psychotherapy and beyond. A group of women therapists in Austin, similarly captivated, began meeting to discuss these very things. I joined their meetings and, several months later, we founded an organization called Austin IN Connection (with IN standing for Interpersonal Neurobiology) which brought in the brightest minds in the Attachment and IPNB fields for public presentations and clinical trainings, as well as a whole host of other community offerings.

I served on the AINC Board from 2007-2014, during which time I had the time of my life and the slightly surreal opportunity to study with Allan and Judith Schore, Dan Siegel, Stephen Porges, Stan Tatkin, Bonnie Badenoch, and many others. AINC is now a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to promote the leading edge of relationship science within the helping professions and the community at large.

Five other things worth mentioning: 1) I trained in Mentalization-Based Therapy with Peter Fonagy, Anthony Bateman, Efrain Bleiberg, and Jon Allen at the Menninger Clinic in Houston; 2) I introduced Family Connections to Austin, a DBT-based course created by NEABPD (the National Education Alliance on Borderline Personality Disorder) for people who are in a relationship with someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder, which is still going strong 16 years later; 3) I am an active and proud member of NAMI Central Texas (National Alliance on Mental Illness); 4) I am now immersed in studying body-based somatic approaches to managing and healing trauma and other nervous system disrupters; and 5) my hands in the living earth planting and caring for my garden, dancing, and my friends, family, and the Divine eternally resource me.