About Me
Connecting with and supporting struggling parents is my favorite thing to do. I wanted to share my professional education and training, as well as the personal background that brought me to this work. I welcome any questions you might have about my qualifications and experience!
Bona Fides
(so that you know that I know what I'm doing!)
My Professional Experience
I’ve done a lot of different work to support families including working as a preschool teacher (in Ohio and Oregon), a school-age site director (for the YMCA), a family case manager (at a shelter for women and children escaping domestic violence), a parent educator (for the Oregon State Extension Services), and as a clinical counselor (at a community mental health agency and in my own private practice). I also occasionally adjunct for the Ohio State University’s Child and Family Studies Department.
While I was doing clinical work the number one reason parents called me for services was for their child’s anxiety. And if you’ll read below you’ll see that I had my own personal reasons to keep up to date on the research and recommendations, too.
My Education
I graduated from the Portland State University with a bachelors in sociology and got my masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of Dayton. I also have post-graduate certification in Infant-Toddler Mental Health in Arcadia University, (which is all about how you can’t address child mental health without supporting parental mental health). I completed the certification training for postpartum mood disorders through Postpartum Support International and I have extensive continuing education on child and teen anxiety, including competing SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions) training, and Exposure Response Prevention for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Some Other cool Stuff I've done
I have written about parenting, families and adoption for Salon.com, Utne, Ode, Brain Child, Huffington Post, Parenting, Yoga Journal, Wondertime, Adoptive Families, Bitch: A Feminist Response to Pop Culture, Kveller.com. Disney’s Family.com, Commonsense Media, Early Childhood NEWS and Greater Good among many others. I was interviewed on New Hampshire Public Radio’s Word of Mouth, on Q with Jian Ghomeshi, and on Dawn Davenport’s Creating a Family. I also consulted on a This American Life episode about open adoption. Let me tell you, hearing Ira Glass thank me at the end of the episode was definitely a peak life experience!
I also do A LOT of trainings for other professionals including presenting at conferences for Postpartum Support International, the American Adoption Congress, the Ohio Association for the Education of Young Children (on supporting anxious kids, of course!) and the Ohio Counseling Association.
What Inspired Me To Do This Work
I was a nervous kid.
See that bike there? It took me a very very very very long time to take off those training wheels. It didn’t matter how encouraging my parents were; in fact, encouragement made things worse. (When my son was born, he was the exact same way.) I made everything difficult! Getting super stuck in my anxieties and refusing to budge. Now I recognize that as demand avoidance and it’s not uncommon for anxious kids. But back then I just got called difficult and overly sensitive. My kindergarten teacher told me that I was a worry wart, which naturally worried me. I told my mom and she said, “Well, you are a bit of a worry wart.”
My anxiety morphed into major depression in my teen years. I was miserable and angry and defensive about how difficult it was for me to function. When I was in my twenties a therapist mentioned that she thought I had social anxiety. I was like, wait, no, I’m just an introverted grouch. Turns out you can be an introvert AND have social anxiety and that unaddressed anxiety will make a person grouchy. Who knew!
That was all well and good — things certainly improved — but then I had my own kids.
Obviously I was also a nervous parent.
Not surprising, right? It’s like I always say — parenting is the most triggering work you will ever do.
My son is a lot like me — introverted, demand avoidant, a tendency to be negative — so he was my invitation go learn how to parent myself better, too. Working through his avoidance taught me how to work through my own. He made sense to me because he was so much like me and I naively thought I had this whole parenting thing nailed. I had all of these wonderful hard won tools and wisdom so I figured I was ready for the next one!
But my daughter? She’s a whole different kind of person! Cheerful, people-pleasing, and with a full blown ADHD diagnosis that ran us ragged. And her anxiety was through the roof, which at first didn’t make sense to me. She doesn’t have the classic anxious temperament that my son and I do, which actually made things a lot trickier. Thank goodness for all of that book learning, continuing education, and clinical consultation I had handy!
My lived experience and my professional background make me a powerhouse anxiety warrior. Seriously. And I want to fight the good fight for you and your child!
