I came to psychotherapy over a decade ago when a tragedy in my life changed me. I was a professor of medical anthropology at University of California San Francisco. I found my world coming apart because I couldn't find a way through the maze of grief alone. I turned to therapy, searching for a path that would transform me. I saw several therapists over the next five years before connecting with one who helped me see the ways that trying to keep out unwanted miseries and fears had narrowed my life. Through therapy, I came to experience how I could live a richer life, more attuned to all that was in me. Today, the part of me that finds the tragedy that happened to be an impossibility is still there. What has changed is my relation to this part. When it comes, sometimes because I go to be with it, sometimes without warning, I now invite it in—and I listen.

This path led me to a Master’s in Counseling Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. My work with Internal Family Systems began eight years ago. I experienced the healing IFS conviction that we are all made up of a multiplicity of beings, each trying to meet its needs in the best way it knows how. I eventually decided to become a psychotherapist in order to be able to share this sensibility with others. Since then I have immersed myself in IFS research and training. I have completed Level 3 Training at the IFS Institute and am currently leading a research project on IFS at the University of California San Francisco. 

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I bring to my therapeutic approach my years as a medical anthropologist in the Caribbean. I have worked among those who manifest the Holy Spirit by speaking in tongues, and others in Orisha Worship who engage with a range of deities to offer divination, protection, and healing. These healers and diviners take part in a world inhabited by spirits and entities that bring history to bear on the present, shaping power relations and afflictions. The medical anthropologist explores across a difference some resonance. Interpreting this resonance, she learns not only a contrasting way of living, but also the unexpressed in her own world. I bring this sensibility to the mutual exploration of psychotherapy.