About Me

I work with individuals and groups who sense that something more is possible—not through fixing or self-improvement, but through learning to stay present with lived experience in relationship.

I am a developmental psychologist, spiritual director, and relational contemplative practitioner. My work is rooted in a simple but demanding orientation: learning to live from the intelligence of the heart—individually, relationally, and collectively.

Through lived experience and years of practice with others, I have come to call this way of working Advocacy of the Heart. It is not a method or a model, but a relational orientation—one that understands healing and awakening not as private achievements, but as processes that unfold through presence, honesty, and shared interiority. At its core is a willingness to stay with lived experience without collapse or domination, allowing deeper coherence and new possibilities to emerge from within relationship.

I offer both individual and group work that supports people in engaging their lives with greater openness, discernment, and relational capacity. Rather than fixing or managing experience, my work invites a way of being with what is arising—within oneself, between people, and within the larger field we share—so that habitual patterns can soften and the intelligence of the heart can be sensed directly.

My approach is integrative and experiential, informed by developmental psychology, interpersonal neurobiology, contemplative practice, and field-based relational work. I hold an M.A. and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Vermont, a B.A. in Biology from Dartmouth College, and a B.A. in Psychology from Seattle Pacific University. I am a certified Spiritual Director and have completed advanced training in Interpersonal Neurobiology, including a Mindsight Immersion with Dr. Daniel Siegel, as well as training in biofield-based and somatic approaches.

For over three decades, I have been a practitioner of contemplative prayer and awareness-based practices, and a longtime student of developmental and relational frameworks including the Enneagram, family systems and constellation work, somatic approaches, integral and spiral models of development, and restorative justice practices. These streams inform my work, but they do not define it. What guides me most is direct experience—and what becomes perceptible when we slow down enough to listen together.

Ultimately, my work is an invitation into a shift in the way of being: one in which the heart becomes the advocate, the teacher, and the guide.