Three strands of my work

For more than 26 years, I have worked alongside people navigating substance use, trauma, grief and loss, relationship and identity shifts, significant life transitions, and psychedelic and non-ordinary experiences.

My clinical work is relational, collaborative, and grounded in the belief that people carry important knowledge about their own lives. I am interested not only in what is difficult, but in what has shaped us, what has carried us through, what matters now, and what might be becoming possible.

My counselling practice is offered through Shoreline Therapy Group in Nanaimo and virtually across British Columbia.

My doctoral research explored the experiences and knowledge of families navigating adolescent substance use, and much of my work since has continued to examine lived experience, relational practice, substance use, mental health, and the ways our systems understand and respond to people.

As a university educator, trainer, researcher, and facilitator, I have worked with students, clinicians, health-care practitioners, organizations, and communities.

I am particularly interested in bringing theory into conversation with what actually happens in people's lives, and in creating spaces where professional knowledge and lived knowledge can inform one another.

I write and speak about substance use and family experience, grief and loss, relational practice, psychedelic preparation and integration, non-ordinary states of consciousness, and the complicated process of human change.

My work includes academic and professional publications, essays, therapeutic resources, practitioner education, and emerging resources for people exploring psychedelic and transformative experiences.

Whether I am writing for clinicians, students, organizations, or curious humans, I am interested in making complex ideas accessible without making the human experiences underneath them simple.