Who I am
As a therapist, I’m committed to showing up with an open mind and heart and also as a full human who takes responsibility for how my social location and history shape me.
I’m a quirky, big-hearted, fifty-something white human of Russian Jewish ancestry who holds a lot of overlapping privilege. I grew up with and have financial wealth. I hold several academic degrees and no related debt. I’m mostly able bodied. I was born in the U.S. and hold U.S. citizenship. For over half a century, I was seen, and identified, as cisgender and straight; now, nonbinary and queer identities feel increasingly resonant for me. For the last few years, I’ve identified as neurodivergent, which not only explains a lot but has helped transform a lot that felt tight and shameful into sources of expansive joy. I’m in ongoing, active exploration in community around my relationship with whiteness, wealth, and other privilege.
My own, mostly wonderful, experience with therapy was a big part of why, at 50, I chose to become a therapist. I see emerging into wellbeing as a process that’s always ultimately collective and in which we each play many different roles.
I’m a pre-licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, practicing under the Supervision of Ryan Keough, MS, LMFT-AS.
Image description: Head and shoulders photo of a middle-aged white person with a big smile. They have wavy, shoulder-length brown hair with white strands; strong features; and soft eyes. They are outdoors in front of a fruiting spice bush and other green plants damp with rain.
How I show up in therapy
I believe that humans are multidimensional and always changing. We can feel and want multiple seemingly contradictory things at once, and our wants and needs can change over time. This belief can show up in session through attention not only to content and cognitive patterns but simultaneously to feelings, pacing, and embodied experience; in the welcoming of contradictions and the seemingly unreasonable or unthinkable; and as a sense of curiosity and wonder.
I believe that present and past relationships help shape our relationship with ourselves, and that our relationship with ourselves helps shape the relationships and systems we move in. In session, this can show up as curiosity about family dynamics, history, secrets, unquestioned stories, relational context, and cultural and social norms.
I believe that our ‘no’ is as valuable as our ‘yes’**--meaning, among other things, that sometimes not feeling or exploring something can be a right and necessary choice. I believe that we can only heal at the pace of compassion***. This can show up as a nuanced relationship with numbness and not-knowing; a willingness both to challenge and to hold in unshaken tenderness; and a foundational commitment to client consent.
I’m committed to ongoing learning and practice to show up in a way that’s antiracist, trauma-attuned, queer-, trans-, polyamory- and neurodiversity affirming, body and sex positive, and supports disability justice and fat liberation.
**echoing “Your ‘no’ is as sexy as your ‘yes,’” repeated by Kai Cheng Thom.
***echoing “moving at the speed of trust,” which I first encountered in the work of adrienne maree brown.