For more than 20 years, I have worked with people across many corners of behavioral health. Those experiences taught me that good therapy begins with seeing the person, not simply the diagnosis.
I didn't enter this work expecting every person's healing to look the same. Twenty years later, I believe that even more strongly.
I began my career in residential mental health and addiction treatment. It was there that I learned some of my earliest lessons about the complexity of change. People rarely arrive with just one thing happening. Substance use may exist alongside trauma. Depression may be intertwined with grief. Relationship difficulties may reflect experiences that began long before the relationship itself.
As my career grew, so did the settings in which I practiced. I worked in psychiatric care and later as a psychiatric social worker within a correctional setting, assessing and supporting women experiencing mental health and substance-use concerns. I also worked in crisis intervention as a Crisis Clinician with the Georgia Crisis & Access Line.
Crisis work reinforced something that has stayed with me: before we can talk about change, people often need to feel heard, understood, and safe enough to take the next step.
Each setting gave me a different view of people, systems, treatment, recovery, and what meaningful care can look like.
Over time, my work expanded beyond providing therapy. I moved into program coordination, clinical supervision, and Clinical Director roles. I supervised clinicians and treatment teams, conducted assessments, reviewed treatment and aftercare planning, collaborated across disciplines, and helped develop and evaluate behavioral-health programs.
I also had opportunities to teach and mentor future professionals as a field instructor in addictions counseling and social work.
Leadership gave me a wider view of mental health care. I was not only thinking about what happens in the therapy room. I was also asking a larger question: What actually makes care good?
For me, the answer continues to come back to thoughtful assessment, evidence-informed treatment, collaboration, cultural awareness, accountability, compassion, and a willingness to see the person beyond the diagnosis.
My doctoral work in International Psychology gave me another lens through which to understand human behavior. Mental health does not happen in isolation. Culture, family, identity, community, environment, relationships, trauma, access to resources, and lived experience all influence how we understand ourselves and move through the world.
That perspective is an important part of how I practice today. I want to understand not only what you are experiencing, but also the context in which it developed and the life you are trying to build.
After working across so many corners of behavioral health, I wanted to create a practice where I could bring those experiences together. That became Wayside Mental Health.
Today, my work integrates the clinical knowledge I have developed over two decades with something equally important: curiosity about the person I'm working with.
I draw from evidence-informed approaches including CBT, DBT-informed skills, ACT, mindfulness, CPT, Schema Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Solution-Focused Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and trauma-informed care. But therapy with me is not about forcing you into a particular model.
It is about understanding you. What happened. What you are experiencing now. What helped you survive. What may no longer be helping. And what you want your life to look like moving forward.
I bring warmth, curiosity, practical guidance, and respect for your autonomy into the room. I will make space for what is difficult while also helping you look at patterns, choices, and possibilities for change.
You can be successful and struggling. You can understand why you behave a certain way and still need to change it. You can love someone and need boundaries. You can have survived something and still be affected by it.
You can be uncertain about what is wrong and still know that something needs attention.
You don't have to figure all of that out before coming to therapy.
We can make sense of it together. Learn more about therapy at Wayside or explore the booking options available to you.