​Do you work with specific client populations in your practice?

​I center marginalized persons, including Black, Indigenous, People of Color/People of the Global Majority (BIPoC/PGM) and Lesbian, Gay, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Aromantic, Agender, Aroace (LGBTQIA+) persons. 

I also welcome persons who hold sociopolitically progressive thought.

​Why do you focus on treatment with marginalized populations?

​The non-marginalized, dominant core culture has a wide array of mainstream providers who understand their histories, backgrounds, and sociopolitical ideas. 

Marginalized folx face a shortage of providers who are empathetic, well-trained  and experienced enough to truly see, receive, and offer solid and relevant treatment. I work to fill that critical gap.

What's your theory on how mental health problems happen? 

Persons in need of psychotherapy are more than a set of symptoms and diagnoses. 

Our mental health is a complex mixture of ancestral, epigenetic, biological, familial, social, and societal components, issues, and dynamics. 

I often tell clients, “who we are and what we become is a combo of the hand we  were dealt, and how we played that hand.”

To improve your mental health and overall social functioning, our work together is going to include deep exploration, processing, and reconciling these complex parts of your story.

How do sociopolitical issues figure into psychotherapy?

Sociopolitical issues—such as structural and systemic racism, economic inequality, gender discrimination, and not holding privilege in these areas—are not separate from your mental health; they are often deeply integrated into the causes of biopsychosocial distress and trauma.  

Research shows that factors like poverty, discrimination (based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.), housing insecurity, and lack of social support are major drivers of anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions, particularly for marginalized persons. These are not just  individual problems for people to solve on their own. They're symptoms of larger societal issues.  

Chronic exposure to oppression, microaggressions, political anxiety, and structural violence creates sociopolitical distress and stress in the mind and in the body. This kind of stress can lead to hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, hopelessness, and other trauma responses that require therapeutic attention.  

For marginalized persons (BIPoC/PGM, LGBTQIA+, etc.), sociopolitical values and historical injustices are often central to their identity, personality, and experience in the world. 

Failing to acknowledge and explore the impact of these forces in therapy can leave clients feeling misunderstood, leading to a poorer therapeutic connection and outcomes.

How do you identify? What are some of your descriptors? 

I’m a cis, lesbian-leaning  bisexual, woman of color (AfroCuban-American). 

My pronouns are she/her/hers. 

I'm sociopolitically-leftist, with a particular affinity towards Liberationist theory and thought, and specifically its interplay between psychology/mental health.

​Where did you go to school, and when did you get licensed?

​I’m a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and completed my master's degree in social work at Catholic University (a logistical decision, as I am not Catholic). I have been a licensed psychotherapist since 2007, first in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

​What is your ‘professional” background and  experience?

​I tend to cringe at that word, “professional,” because it's been wielded against marginalized groups like women, people of color and LGBTQIA+ folx to discriminate against us, including sometimes describing our hair, clothing, speech and general manner, as “unprofessional”  because we somehow didn't fit neatly into the dominant core-culture’s mold of what professional meant.

Words aside, I began working in social services and mental health in 1993. I have both a depth and  breadth of experience across various settings and populations, including:

• Working in the field of ​child welfare with minors and their families.

• ​Working with migrants, refugees, and asylees.

• ​Assisting persons who use substances (alcohol, THC and other psychoactive substances as a coping mechanism.

• ​Working with persons who have experienced and perpetrated domestic/interpersonal violence.

• ​Experience working with sexual abuse victims-survivors, people who are sexually-preoccupied/who use sex and love as coping (including excessive use of porn, sexual acting-out, and folx who’ve committed sex crimes—I’m a former Certified Sex Offender Treatment Provider (CSOTP) in the Commonwealth of Virginia and for the State of California.

• ​Working in social services and mental health for non-profit, for-profit, corporate, private and public/governmental (county, state, and federal) organizations in program design, management and supervisory roles.

​What are initial sessions like?

​If you choose to hire me, your initial sessions will be centered on information gathering, our getting to know each other, and starting to build the trust necessary to form a strong therapeutic relationship between us. 

You'll also learn how to tap into how you're feeling in your mind and in your body at any given moment, via the structured feelings check-in process I use. 

Clients that have been working with me are able to describe how they're feeling, at any given moment in  their minds and in their bodies, in a word, a sentence, a color and/or in a shape! 

Knowing exactly how you feel now (and how you felt in the past) is the very first step to being able to get a handle on your overall mental health.

​I’ve had therapists use CBT, DBT, ACT and other technique or skills-based psychotherapy models. Do you use these?

​I do, but sparingly; they have their place. 

Most technique and skills-based therapy models, when they're used as stand-alone treatment(s), are like repeatedly taking a pain-reliever for a chronic  migraine condition. If it works, it'll only work for a short while. 

Technique and skills-based models are mostly meant to suppress or extinguish negative coping behaviors. They don't really address root causes of mental health issues. They don't help to explain where the problems are coming from, or how to address them at a deeper level.

We'll be going into where your mental health issues are rooted. 

I use a unique and interesting "recap" tool that supports short-form psychoanalytic/psychodynamic therapies. This is used to generate and build insight. Once they get the hang of it, most clients grow to enjoy and appreciate it a lot. 

One client said, “Oh. [The Recap] is like watching last week's montage recap in a Netflix series; only the series is starring me!”

​What are some fun facts about you?

​I'm a world traveler and a former vanlifer (sold and gave away most of my stuff and I lived in a van with my wife for almost two years). 

I'm a mom to an adult son and have been with my same-sex partner since 2007. 

I'm also a licensed cosmetologist and former commercial hairstylist and makeup artist (I picked this up in between burn-outs from doing clinical-forensic work with court-ordered-to-therapy folx). 

Also, I love Atlanta-styled, slow-mo’ rhythm dance roller skating on quad wheels! (And yes, if you Google me, you might find some old cring-y TikTok videos—what can I say? … it was the pandemic!)