Truth. Alignment.
Becoming.
"Above all, I care about your story — and how it connects to your soul. We'll explore it together, piece by piece, until the threads make sense again. "
I'm a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor with Supervisory Endorsement (LPCC-S) based in Mason, Ohio. I've worked in mental-health settings since 1998 and as a counselor since 2004.
How I think about this work.
From my earliest days as a counselor, I was drawn to the relational side of the work — the idea that technique matters, but the quality of the relationship matters too. For a while, honestly, that felt a little rebellious. Like I was doing something informal in a field that valued structure and method.
Then I found Jean Baker Miller's work and felt something settle. Relational-Cultural Theory gave me language for what I'd already been experiencing: people grow through connection. The relationship isn't simply the backdrop for therapy. It's part of the work itself.
RCT's attention to power, culture, disconnection, and social context matters to me too. I often think about trauma through the lenses of power, control, and safety. Experiences can leave a lasting mark when they overwhelm our sense of agency or make the world feel less safe. Sometimes that comes from a single event. Sometimes it happens slowly, relationally, and almost invisibly.
So when people ask about my theoretical orientation, RCT isn't just a framework I apply. It's the closest description of how I naturally think about people, relationships, healing, and change.
The relationship is the foundation. The tools are what we build with.
That said — I'm not just sitting here nodding warmly. Depending on what you need, I draw from a range of approaches.
Narrative Therapy helps us examine the stories you've been living inside — the ones you inherited, internalized, or simply outgrew.
CBT and DBT can give us practical, structured ways to work with thought patterns, emotional regulation, and habits that keep repeating even when you know better.
Motivational Interviewing is useful when part of you wants change and another part isn't quite ready yet.
I'm not dogmatic about any of it. We use what helps us understand what's happening and move the work forward.
Over twenty years of experience.
I started working in mental health in 1998 — not as a therapist, but as the first office manager of a small nonprofit counseling center called One Hope. By 2004, I was working as a counselor, and I've been doing this work in one form or another ever since.
After earning two master's degrees, I spent years in community-based outpatient treatment and opened my first private practice in 2008. Since then, I've worked in acute psychiatric care at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, led clinical teams at Talbert House — one of Hamilton County's largest behavioral health agencies — taught at the university level, trained other professionals, and returned to private practice.
My seminary training has also become one of the more useful things I bring into the room — not because I'm doing faith-based counseling, but because I understand the architecture of belief from the inside. That matters when someone is trying to untangle what they were taught from what they actually believe.
I hold the Supervisory Endorsement on my counseling license, which means I'm also qualified to supervise counselors working toward independent licensure.
View full credentials & CV →First office manager of a nonprofit church-based counseling center.
School-based and office-based counselor serving rural southeastern Indiana.
Full-time private practice serving children, adolescents, and adults.
Clinical Service Provider → Clinical Supervisor → Associate Director → Lead Training Specialist.
Clinical counselor in the Psychiatric Intake Response Center, providing emergency psychiatric evaluations.
Transitioned back to full-time private practice, seeing adults virtually and in person.
More than a therapist.
I believe it matters that you know something about who you're working with. Healing happens in connection — and connection requires two real people in the room.
I don't practice from behind a blank slate. I don't make sessions about me, but I also don't pretend I don't exist. There are times when I'll share something from my own experience if I believe it can help you feel understood, see something differently, or move the work forward. The session is still yours, but authenticity and appropriate transparency are part of the relationship we build together.
Outside the office, I'm a writer, a playwright, a theatre journalist, a professional wrestling personality and backstage official, a theme park enthusiast, a travel agent, a photographer, and an occasional standup comedian. I've been inducted into the NWF Hall of Fame. I came out at 46. Like everybody else, I'm still becoming.
The point isn't that we need to have lived the same life. We probably haven't. What matters is that I'm willing to show up as a real person too — curious, honest, appropriately transparent, and aware that the relationship itself is part of the work.
Novelist, playwright, essayist, and theatre journalist.
More than 20 years as a professional wrestling personality and backstage official. NWF Hall of Fame inductee.
Playwright and theatre journalist covering Cincinnati theatre at Off Book Cincinnati.
Author of The Magic of It All and owner of a boutique travel agency built around thoughtful, lower-stress travel.
Former adjunct faculty member at two universities. Creator of original courses and more than 30 professional trainings.
Photographer working across portraits, performance, events, and places throughout the Cincinnati and Dayton area.
Writing that connects to the work.
Writing is another way I make sense of people, identity, belief, shame, relationships, and the stories we tell about ourselves. Two books in particular overlap closely with the work I do in the therapy room.
A not-so-perfect, broadly spiritual guide to alignment, identity, relationships, grief, meaning, and becoming more fully yourself.
A personal exploration of faith, deconstruction, doubt, identity, and learning to question the systems that shaped you.
Let's find out who you're still becoming.
If what you've read here resonates, reach out. I review every inquiry personally.