Since I was young, I felt most at home when I was alone in nature. As I got older, I saw how the sense of aliveness and connection I felt amongst mountains and dirt didn’t quite carry into my interpersonal relationships. In fact, many of my first attempts at real, committed intimate partnership were marked with conflict, stress, and confusion. I felt scared, alone, resentful, and disempowered overall in relationships.

After years of working on myself - meditating hours per day, vision quests, acupuncture, herbalism, shamanic journeying, and more - I began to realize that I was missing something. Then I learned about the two keys to deeply healing and feeling alive: trauma and relationships.

Learning that trauma and chronic stress shapes the nervous system, and affects all aspects of life including your own psychology, was a revelation for me. I felt so much relief at knowing that there was a reason for my struggles, and a way out of them. In this vein, I’ve studied and received Organic Intelligence, a ground-breaking trauma healing modality, for many years now; my life has completely transformed as a result.

The other missing piece was relationships. I remember reading Stan Tatkin, a pre-eminent relationship expert, saying “we’re hurt by people, and we’re healed by people.” This finally clicked for me. The frustrating, painful dynamics in my relationships were both a result of my traumas, and a recapitulation of them. So, I could actually heal my trauma by being IN a healthy intimate relationship. I just needed to learn how.

This led me into years of study with The Relationship School, which is an organization teaching folks the skills and frameworks for building powerful, secure intimate partnerships. I’ve spent countless hours practicing communication tools, studying attachment styles, reading books and listening to podcasts out of my desire to help myself and others to have healthy - even healing - relationships.

As a coach, I aim to support and challenge you to listen deeply to yourself, examine your sometimes unhelpful habits and strategies, and cultivate a meaningful life with solid relationships. I believe in your innate goodness and worth, and know you have a lot of the answers already. Sometimes the work will feel easy and different from traditional therapy, where one digs for problems, and instead will feel like simple conversation - this is how we work with the rhythms of your biology. And at other times, it may feel like I am challenging you to be more honest with yourself, holding you accountable to personal responsibility. We’ll bring to bear the tools of mindfulness, communication, and relational self-awareness

I encourage you to remember that I’m on the ride with you: digging deep in myself when I feel stuck, learning and practicing, and humbling myself to the great tasks of living and loving.

Training

I am trained in Present Centered Relationship Coaching with the The Relationship School, through which I’ve deeply studied attachment science, conflict resolution, relational self-awareness, and a host of other valuable skills and frameworks. So, with more of a relationship oriented approach, we might focus on where you’re feeling stuck, in conflict, or unsure of what would have you feel more fulfilled in your most important connections. I can offer a tool kit of communication skills, frameworks on mutually fulfilling partnership, and some maps that might help you navigate the sometimes dark and turbulent waters of intimacy.

In addition, I can support your biology in it’s unfolding toward more ease, enjoyment and well-being. Through my training in Organic Intelligence (OI), I bring a compassionate and gentle approach toward patterns of reactivity, where the brain and body perceive and respond to a sense of threat, even if there isn’t any. OI is a tradition born out of somatic psychology and complexity science, and it is a gentle yet powerful approach to trauma, stress, and all around approaching psychology from a biological perspective. Our work together will involve easy conversations, and sometimes bringing to attention images, sensations, feelings, and thoughts. The goal is to support your complex biological system to self-organize - a very different approach than discharging each trauma or issue one by one.