Formal education is important but usually insufficient to teach us about loving.  More than anything else, my work in all my endeavors is grounded in what I learned across my early 20s, when I knew my mentor and 'godmother' Susan Deborah Green.  Although she was not a counselor by occupation, she knew the role in her soul. Susan provided the kind of loving, empathy, and guidance that I know to be the essence of therapeutic work.  In the course of our relationship, my life opened up and transformed, a profound shift in consciousness from suffering, fear, and despair to warmth, joy, and loving.  From this experience I know the catalytic role one person can play in another's life, whether in the role of therapist, parent, teacher, friend, or lover.

In the time since Susan's passing, I have experienced the support and guidance of many others who practice the simple art of conscious, skillful loving.  They are the truest teachers and the wisest friends.  Especially important in my development has been the guidance of initiated men, so rare in our culture, including Choctaw/Chicasaw/Cherokee elder Sequoyah Trueblood, and Santa Fe psychotherapists Gary Grimm and Dr. Jim Fickey. 

I received my BA with Honors from Princeton University and my MA in Counseling from Southwestern College in Santa Fe.  I am a licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor (LPCC) by the state of New Mexico Therapy and Counseling Practice Board.  I have additional training in psychodrama and action methods, transpersonal methods, and training and supervision in sex addiction and recovery, all with nationally recognized experts in their fields. 

From 2006-2008, I worked at the Life Healing Center in Santa Fe, a nationally-recognized residential treatment center.  I cofounded and helped to design the Sexual Integrity program for sex addicts.  I also developed the Life Healing Center's programming for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered clients, and created an experiential education program on Trauma and Resilience, which became the basis for the book I am writing. 

I am a core faculty member at Southwestern College, a graduate school awarding masters degrees in Counseling and Art Therapy. I teach Psychology of Consciousness, Applied Theories of Human Development, Career and Life Development, and new courses on Healing Sexual Trauma and Working with Sex and Love Addiction.

My astrological experience dates from 1985, when as a young chiId I discovered a small collection of esoteric texts in the basement credenza of my grandparents' house.  This began a lifelong passion about which more details are available on the astrology page of this site.

I live in Santa Fe with my partner Christopher Johnson, a spiritual healing and prayer practitioner.  We are nature lovers likely to be found on a trail when not in session.  

"One of the hardest tasks, yet possibly also the most important in healing from the effects of trauma, is to allow others to know and care for us. Letting ourselves be loved, when we have been betrayed and let down so many times, is incredibly hard work.  Over and over again, we will find ourselves closing to love again, unsure of whether it is truly safe.  Yet if we do not risk the loss of love, we cannot truly know it and our hunger for it will only increase.  

As a healer, the heart of my work is love: patient, skillful, conscious love.  My job is to provide it as creatively and continuously as I can, to find the way to care about the person in front of me that they will allow at this time, and then encourage them to expand that zone of loveability, so that life and the people in their lives can provide more and more to them.  As Hafiz writes, 'It is all a love game, and Hafiz always wins.'  Love is what heals."

-from Trauma, Addiction, and the Curriculum of the Soul (forthcoming)