For as long as I can remember, I found myself fascinated by this thing we call being human. I was curious to understand what it meant to feel so many different emotions and to have so many different experiences shape the way we think and behave.

By the time I’d entered my undergraduate program, I was ready to jump head-first into studying psychology. Not surprisingly given my lifelong interest, my fire was fueled. While I was excited by all that I was learning, I wasn’t yet sure how I would use the knowledge and experience I was building. I looked to peers, professors, and psychologists that I was meeting to learn more about what it meant to apply this learning.

To be honest, the concept of therapy that I saw reflected back to me wasn’t one that I identified with. What I saw was a model that seemed to imply that people were broken or harmed and needed to be fixed, and that the practitioner was the one to change the person. While I already knew that therapy could be so impactful, I didn’t resonate with this outdated version.

It was then that I started looking around for a concept of therapy and human change that fit with my own values. I learned more about our innate drive for self-development as human beings, and our own capacity for growth. I knew from my own life that making significant shifts was always within my capability if I had the right tools. I started to understand that a therapist’s role was to help facilitate the insight and access to the tools for us to make positive changes in ourselves. With this more aligned understanding of the power of therapy, I knew that this was my future.

Today, I’m honored to be in this role each day. I have the opportunity to help my clients sort through what already exists in them so that they can water their authentic parts and watch them grow. I help them sit with even uncomfortable feelings or thoughts and meet them with compassion. I encourage them to consider how they want to be remembered and to start living in a way that moves them closer to their values.

This work has also allowed me the privilege of walking alongside many clients who are healing their relationships with their own bodies. I specialize in helping clients explore how diet culture impacts them and begin to reject it in service of honoring their core values. We do this at a steady but compassionate pace, and we identify ways to build a more respectful and trusting relationship with their bodies. I help clients remember too that we do not have to love our bodies in order to respect them.

And at the end of the day, I have the opportunity to invite my clients to bring all of the parts of themselves and get to say, “I hear you. I see you. You are not alone.” It is eternally humbling.