about me

helping people through transitions

Most of my work as a therapist has been providing support to high functioning people as they move through life and the transitions that naturally arise. For example, many of us experience:  

Transitions are those time periods between stability. When we are moving away from solid ground towards a new stability, it always includes some letting go of what came before. Sometimes we choose a change, and it is welcome; other times, an unexpected or unwanted change disrupts our life without our having chosen it. Either way, letting go always involves reflection on what’s come before, and the meaning-making that helps us move us forward.

Transitions always involve some stepping into the unknown. What we are leaving behind, even when it has brought difficulties alongside the joys, has been what we know as our stability.  Therapy through transitions helps you find the places of stability even as the ground is shifting under your feet.

my own experiences of transitions

As I work with clients, I hear so much about what people go through in life and how individuals navigate their way through change. I also have my own personal experience with life transitions, which is my hands-on “laboratory” for processing.

I talk in detail with my own therapist about how the changes I go through affect how I see myself, and how those identity shifts affect my important relationships. In that way, I better understand both my strengths and weaknesses, and I can make choices that allow my behaviors to align with my values.  

When my own experience is relevant to what my clients are going through, I draw on that - alongside my professional training and understanding - to help you approach whatever your life has presented you.

These are some of the changes I’ve experienced that have contributed to the meaning I make of my own life lived:

• a new sibling (mine adopted from Korea when she was 10 months old and I was 5)

• life away from home at college

• two rounds of graduate school

• a first profession (as an English as a Second Language teacher)

• a second profession (as a psychotherapist)

• a first marriage and a move to Venezuela for three years

• a second marriage and a new experience of combining two long-established households

• fertility treatment long ago

• a fabulous daughter who has since left home into her very full life

• a really awesome “stepson” who I acquired when he was 30

• my mother needing care as dementia begins to accompany her aging

• reflection on a context of religious upbringing and the extent to which it provides direction, or not, as I age into this next stage of life

You might be drawn to working with me because of some similarity we have. But even if the details of our lives are not the same, there are always similarities in the ways human beings experience change and the ways we can best support ourselves through those times. We make meaning out of where we’ve been, and we make the most of who we know we are able to become.

growth through change

As we mature, there are obvious transitions that bring us into a new position or role, and a new role influences our sense of identity, or “who we are.” What we were before the change has become familiar and comfortable, and stepping away from the old identity and into an unknown new one often involves feelings of loss.  

We often can’t remember our childhood transitions, such as when a new sibling arrives, launching us into a new position in the family order; or when we start daycare or school, spending part of the day away from home, with new caregivers.

As young adults, we’re usually not mature enough to fully process the shifts in identity that occur as we finish school, find work, establish our own households and become increasingly self-supporting. 

As we partner and maybe build families, we are newly also responsible for others, the effects of which usually take hold during the busiest, most demanding parts of our lives.

When we first go to therapy, we spend time processing those transitions that formed us before we really had the tools to understand their effect on us.

And then later in life, lots of us “catch up with ourselves,” having the ability to process what’s happening, when it’s happening. Those past experiences are still part of the whole of our lives and we return to them psychologically to help us connect the dots to who we are now, and who we want to become. More and more, we are able to be here now, having made sense of all that has come before.

on the other side of a transition

I love working with people through times of change because experience, even when difficult, always seems to provide some growth or reward.  

On the far end of an impactful life transition, therapy helps us take stock of growth that has occurred. We occupy a new stage of life with a new role, and we can reflect on how the strengths and gifts that helped us through the in-between time are now a more accessible part of our identity. 

We assess our relationships in the context of our new roles and our more-developed selves, and decide how to conduct ourselves in ways aligned with this new, clearer version of self. We gain understanding of all that has happened, welcome and unwelcome, and that meaning-making is now present to guide us in the next chapter. 

the most difficult transitions

In my experience as a therapist, of all the changes we experience in life, two of the most difficult are divorce or death. Often, it is one or the other of these experiences that brings people in to talk to a therapist.  These experiences are so emotionally challenging… but why is that?

Divorce and death can be staggeringly difficult to process because our relationships provide so much of the support, predictability, and solid ground in our lives. One important way we know ourselves is through our relationships. So when core relationships change, we have to get to know ourselves all over again.  

Relationships are also hard. So when there is a dramatic change, there’s lots to reflect on, process, and understand.

We can be doing well most of the time, and then, when a big change arrives, we can feel like our functioning nose-dives to the point that we need some compassionate help with strategies to get to the other side.  I enjoy being there for clients in the difficult times, for the growth, the discovery, and the recovery that awaits them.