My vision is to expand my practice to include providing early childhood infant toddler mental health services to families in rural Columbia County, OR.  

Throughout my journey in this field, I have been given the opportunity to work with a diverse array of individuals, ranging in ages, with the majority of those services being provided in Columbia County, OR. I have acquired a wide range of skills in both mental health and addiction services and first started in the field in 2008. I have the lived experience of growing up in Columbia County as my family moved to Vernonia when I was in the 5th grade.  My husband and I have also decided to raise our own family in this rural community and this leads me to have a strong passion for providing services and advocating for families in this county.  I have gone from providing adult addiction services at both outpatient and inpatient settings, ran and restructured an adolescent dual diagnosis day treatment program, supervised and ran adolescent outpatient SUD services,  participated in Juvenile Drug Court, and became a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) with a certification in Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). Additionally, I am a certified alcohol and drug counselor three (CADC III). I started my own private practice because I wanted to have more autonomy in how I provided those services,  while also creating my practice to run in a manner that supported my own work-home-self-balance.

I am working on creating this vision, because what we know is that by increasing early intervention services, we are reducing that child’s chances of having mental health and physical health conditions later in life. There is a great need for providers who can provide these services and my passion has led me to develop this vision to bring this community additional resources.

Through out my career I have also been passionate about teaching and training through providing clinical supervision. When I was in my own internship working with young children and families I ultimately did not have adequate supervision due to no fault of the agency, but due to the supervisor having a medical leave unexpectedly and my new supervisor was thrust into the role. I found that my smile was fading and I could not separate my work-life balance and did not know how to practice self-care to prevent vicarious trauma. I ultimately decided to step away from working with young families and opted to work with adolescents providing dual diagnosis therapy in outpatient and day treatment settings. I had a substance abuse prevention certificate and decided to get my CADC I (later followed by II and III) while I worked on my LPC. 10 years working primarily with adolescents who were struggling with substance use was a far stretch from working with young children, however I had found my Passion. As I worked with adolescents I became very aware that early intervention was where we needed to focus our efforts. I learned about PCIT therapy and wanted to help families develop skills to support and promote healthy development and relationships.  Then I opted to start my own business and continued to work on enhancing my skill set and evolving. 

My vision is to focus on increasing promotion of ITMH services. I am passionate about advocacy, but also love being in the room with families. Ideally, I would like to create a counseling center where I can provide clinical supervision while also being able to maintain my love of being a child and family therapist. On my most recent vision board I included the words “Find a Path Forward - No Matter the Odds” and I am determined.