My Journey.
You become.
It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.
From The Velveteen Rabbit, By Margery Williams
It took me a long time to “become.” I spent a large portion of my life forcing myself to be someone I wasn’t. After graduating summa cum laude from Northwestern University with a degree in psychology, I jumped into law school at UCLA. With enough internal pressure to put me in a state of chronic stress, I was able to graduate 10th in a class of 315 and land a prestigious job at an international law firm. I finally had everything I thought I needed to be happy - academic achievements, a high-status job, family approval, the car, a packed social life - and it was’t enough. I was’t enough. My need to prove my own worth had turned my life into a pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie.
Years later, I realized how cruel I was being to myself. I stopped forcing myself to endure a career and life that weren’t meant for me. I was ready to “become.” Mustering all the courage I had, I left the law in search of what really inspired me, and that became my work as a therapist. I earned a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute and haven’t stopped learning and growing my skills in the areas of LGBTQ+ issues, addiction, sex and intimacy, trauma, personal growth, and psychedelic therapies and integration. Not because I need to anymore, but because it’s my passion.
I’ve been practicing psychotherapy since 2011. Before entering private practice, I received excellent training in the areas of sex, intimacy, and addiction working under a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist and seeing clients in a drug rehabilitation center. Since then, I’ve trained in the Hakomi method, EMDR, Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS), psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, mindfulness, movement and art-based therapies, and guided meditation. I completed the MAPS MDMA-Assisted Therapy training, received a certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy and Research from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and am working towards a Ph.D. in Psychedelic Studies in collaboration with Ubiquity University and the AWE Foundation.
Outside of my clinical work, I’m a published author and international speaker in the field of psychedelic-assisted therapy. I founded the Queer Medicine Community and volunteer with the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines.
Click here for a full list of credentials.
