Born in New England, I grew up in a small, uneventful coastal town. My parents split when I was young. My family had its share of dysfunction – including a great deal generational trauma and hardship: abuse, addiction, abandonment, isolation, neglect, profound pain and loss.. like many, if not most families.

When I was in my mid-20s I found myself in an abusive relationship. I knew I had wounds from my childhood, and I had the sense I was going to have to address those wounds sooner or later – whatever it was that taught me to tolerate abuse as though it were love – needed to be healed. So I started going to therapy.

My relationship with my new therapist seemed helpful at first, helping me to navigate my way out of the relationship I was in. However, years later, I found myself in yet another abusive relationship – this time with the therapist. He had become (or maybe always was?) physiologically and emotionally abusive. His versions of “recovery” and “self care” were sinister, insidious, and destructive.

It’s called Therapy Harm. It doesn’t seem to happen often, but it probably happens more than it should. Slowly over time, the therapist twists the power dynamic of the therapeutic relationship in such a way that they make the client dependent on the therapist. Often isolating them from friends and loved ones, and a variety of abuses follow.

In therapy, I was open, honest, and vulnerable. I trusted a him. I was supposed to be able to trust him. It never occurred to me that I needed to be careful, or protective of myself in that room. I went to therapy to heal. I was determined to heal. I had offered up all my vulnerable pieces, all my wounds and my brokenness, my hopes in life, my heart, soul and mind – in what should have been a safe space – and they were all used against me. Like an auto immune disease attacks the body, this weapon was me, designed to destroy me. My life and essence turned against me. 

Coerced, controlled, bullied, and manipulated by this version of psychotherapy, compounded by religious brainwashing and a low key narcissistic boyfriend – I wound up married – trapped in a nightmare come to life.  

Believing that the difficulties in my marriage were because of my lingering unresolved childhood trauma, and my own bad choices, I sought the help of a new therapist – a trauma specialist who practiced EMDR – someone equipped to process the traumatic experiences I had sustained. Over the course of our work together I came to understand how I ended up married and the horrific nature of my relationship with therapist #1. I also started to see my marriage and in a new light, and the un-health we had created. It was also in this season that I came to understand that I am both a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), and an Empath. Dots started to connect, and my life started to finally make sense. 

It took years to physically resolve what happened in my marriage, culminating in a divorce; and several additional years to fully see and unravel the damage that first therapist had done.

Many years later, I now live in physical, mental, and emotional safety. I have loving relationships that nurture and propel me forward, and I have strong faith in my Higher Power, Jesus. I trust myself to make decisions for my life that are right for me. I have healed significantly, and learned an enormous amount about trauma, shame, addiction, narcissism, and emotional, spiritual, and mental abuse – and, of course, healing – what it looks like to heal, what it takes to heal, and how to navigate through the darkness before the dawn. I continue to hone and integrate the gifts of being highly sensitive and empathic. I love, feel, and learn deeply, and I grow forcefully.

We humans are a collective. I believe that as we grow and move forward individually, we also advance the whole of Humanity. I am here to do my part – which in part, is to help others embrace and integrate what makes them them – to embody that singular spark of the Divine that makes each person unique.

If my story resonates with yours, I would love to meet you and see if there is work for us to do together.