between studios
THERAPIST | FACILITATOR | EDUCATOR
I am a therapist, facilitator, educator, artist, parent. I am middle-class, white, middle-aged (still a little surprised to find myself saying that), able-bodied (if a bit creaky), neurodivergent, queer and trans. I live and love in Tacoma, Washington. I spent much of my adult life in Detroit, Michigan, 5 beautiful years in Flagstaff, AZ, all of my childhood in Mt. Pleasant, MI.
I really love being alive. I try to savor life everyday. Like many people, I've had my moments when it hasn't been easy to stay in touch with that. Life can be hard. It's important to me to honor the aliveness, and the liveliness, in everyone I work with.
A LITTLE ABOUT
MY BACKGROUND
Professionally, I've been welcomed into training and co-working with leaders in my favorite modalities. I trained and worked as an educator and facilitator in the Program on Intergroup Relations at the University of Michigan, one of the vanguard university-based dialogue programs in the country. Dialogue facilitation is at the heart of my work. I've participated in many Theatre of the Oppressed workshops with several excellent 'jokers.' I've studied and collaborated for many years with a group of Narrative therapists and practitioners led by Jill Freedman and Gene Coombs. Adapting Narrative techniques to group work is a project of mine.
I bring things I've learned from those wonderful communities alongside my curiosity and fondness for humans in all their quirky fabulousness to the ways I work with people as a therapist and facilitator. I really enjoy exploring people's intentions and desires for their lives with them.
In addition to my therapy and facilitation work, for the past 15 years my 'day jobs' (and I had really lovely days) involved teaching in several university programs. Most recently, I worked as an instructional designer at The Evergreen State College. Before that, I spent 5 years teaching social justice and diversity and social policy at Northern Arizona University. Before that, at the University of Michigan, I taught in Women and Gender Studies, the Center for Global and Intercultural Study, the School of Social Work, and The Program on Intergroup Relations. I got a lot of exercise walking between classes!