I graduated with my master’s in art therapy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. I was very fortunate to work with experienced art therapists at the Cook County Jail. Detainees with mental illness are separated from the general population and receive psychiatric and mental health services, including art therapy.
My thesis detailed how to navigate the therapeutic relationship with a complex power differential between myself and my client.
I learned how destructive it can be to the client to feel judged and how to offset this by focusing on personal strengths and positive attitude.
Who I am
I also learned the value of humor to help people feel comfortable and be open to honesty. These were integral experiences to my professional development.
Once I graduated, I moved to New Mexico and got to work on my independent license. There are fantastic loan repayment programs available to practitioners who work in underserved areas, and I took full advantage of this while working in both New Mexico and Alaska. I worked in community mental health care to gain experience with children, families, “regular” adults, developing my group therapy techniques, and implementing art therapy to help people work through trauma and stress caused by severe mental illness.
I’ve lived in Southeast Alaska since 2008 and settled in Ketchikan in 2011. It’s beautiful here. Every day I feel lucky to wake up to the ocean and the mountains, the old forests and trails that constitute my backyard. It’s worth the geographic isolation.
I’ve maintained my LPC since 2008 as well as my supervision credential in 2013. I trained and mentored new clinicians for ten years and found this work to be humbling and rewarding. I’ve worked with adolescents and their families in multiple settings to improve their trajectory towards insight, compassion, and being successful.
I returned to school in 2022 in a doctorate program to update my knowledge of mental health treatment. And a lot has changed in 20 years! I try to bring the most up to date research to my sessions. I’ve seen the information help my clients understand their experience better, resulting in more positive self-regard and improved outcomes overall.