I've worked in the Pioneer Valley for over twenty years as adjunct faculty at the University of Massachusetts and Springfield College; as a mental health clinician at Crossroads and River Valley Counseling Center, the Employee's Assistance Program and in-patient unit at Holyoke Hospital; and many years of serving as an educational consultant, court investigator and Guardian ad Litem for the Probate and Juvenile Courts in the area.

My work as a psychotherapist in private practice has been diverse and based on my education in method acting, philosophy, comparative religion, the principles of Psychosynthesis, Integrative Breathwork, (wave work) and mindfulness-based psychotherapy. I have an Educational Doctorate in Counseling Psychology from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and am a licensed Mental Health Counselor. I am a long time meditator and my work has always been informed and guided by my own spiritual development. It is exciting to combine the wisdom inherent in all religions and spiritual practices with more traditional therapeutic skills. There are those times when life brings us challenges that obscure the path and a good therapist can help. Nevertheless, I respect the "inner knowing" of each individual to experience life fully with an open heart and the capacity to heal themselves and guide their own growth.

I had long wanted to be trained in EMDR and attended Laurel Parnell's workshop at Omega Institute in August 2005 fully expecting to learn a powerful new therapeutic skill. There were forty of us and we covered both Level 1 and Level 2 in seven days in a peaceful and beautiful setting. It was a wonderful workshop and I returned home with a sense of being more than adequately trained and excited about incorporating EMDR into my work. What I didn't expect was the profound, almost spiritual experience that has since helped me to pull together the different aspects of my work into a more cohesive whole. The many possible applications of EMDR to mindfulness- based psychotherapy is very exciting, as is its application to working with individuals, family's and communities who are recovering from personal trauma and the trauma of war, genocide and other overwhelming disasters. I am a founding member of One by One, Inc., an organization dedicated to transforming the legacies of conflict, war and genocide through dialogue. Although rooted in the Holocaust our work also extends to other polarized groups, including Rwanda and the Balkans. In order to combine my experience as a facilitator of Dialogue groups with my skills as a psychotherapist, I completed a Graduate Certificate Program in the "Psycho-Social Foundations of Peacebuilding" at the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont in 2004.

I am excited about expanding my private practice to include my new skills in psychosocial peacebuilding, EMDR and mindfulness psychotherapy with people whose lives have been affected by overwhelming circumstances, violence and the trauma of war.