I am a long distance road runner, hiker, and newer trail runner in California. I grew up on the east coast with lots of coastline, but few other natural elements to explore. I moved to California in 2010 and immediately fell in love with the big trees and bigger mountains, all while staying close to that home of the coast. Now in my mid-40s, I am balancing how to push my running limits all while figuring out how to stay physically and mentally healthy. Part of that including changing careers and I am in the early years of a psychotherapy practice in the Bay Area. I love to be with people in my practice who are curious about the connection of emotion, body, and mind.
If sorrow is how we learn to love, then let us learn. Already enough sorrow's been sown for whole continents to erupt into astonishing tenderness. Let us learn. Let compassion grow rampant, like sunflowers along the highway. Let each act of kindness replant itself into acres and acres of widespread devotion. Let us choose love as if our lives depend on it. The sorrow is great. Let us learn to love greater -- riotous love, expansive love, love so rooted, so common we almost forget the world could look any other way.
I am both a registered nurse and an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist (#143893) in California. As a nurse, I spent my career largely in oncology and have a special understanding of the endurance race that cancer care can be. My nursing career informs my work as a therapist, where I am interested in how the mind and emotional body interacts with the physical body. This can look like traditional talk therapy, but I also like to bring both awareness to and skills to the way the body holds past stories and current experience. For myself and with runners I have come to know, it seems we have a unique relationship to and understanding of how our bodies can perform. And yet there is more to the body than performance. Running has been a staple of my self-care and mental health hygiene. And yet, I am aware of how endurance athletes including myself are a special breed when it comes to being with pain and suffering. I hope to offer folks support beyond the physical grind on the open road or trail. There is more than one way to be with what hurts.
