Background

I began working in the mental health field in the late 1990s, beginning in my early twenties with an internship at the New Hampshire State Hospital. Since that time, I have served in a variety of capacities and positions in multiple agencies, organizations, and psychiatric settings throughout the US. I completed my Masters of Social Work in 2019 at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where I also received an MFA in Creative Writing in 2007. During the path to licensure (AK, #182550), I consistently supplemented my employment in the mental health field as a freelance writer, musician, and adjunct professor of English and Creative Writing. Since then, integrating my passion for therapeutic work with my background in writing, story, and narrative structuring has proven critically beneficial to my clinical vocation. The ways that the creative process can aid clients in their efforts to achieve insight and therapeutic outcomes remains a valuable resource in this work and in my practice.

It's still hard to believe that a single internship at the NH State Hospital - an undertaking in my early 20s inspired by the works of Walker Percy, Sylvia Plath, Irvin Yalom, and others - eventually found me in the faraway, distant north, now working as a clinical therapist in private practice in Alaska. If you had told me as a child growing up in Pennsylvania that I'd one day land here, I would've balked at the possibility. While I initially expected Alaska would be a great place to live and study for "a couple years" when I first arrived in 2003, something about life in the wild, far north roots down inside you, making it impossible to leave this mysterious and beautiful place until, before you know it, "a couple years" magically becomes twenty...