I hold a Colorado license as a Licensed Professional Counselor, and much of what I offer today reaches beyond that license. This page sets out which work is which, so you know what you are saying yes to before we begin.
1. My Primary Role: Spiritual Doula and Elder of the Scar Clan
Whatever shape our work takes, my primary role is spiritual doula and elder of the Scar Clan. My coaching practice, my consultation with practitioners and my teaching all grow from that root, and I carry the role into each of them.
A doula walks beside someone through a great passage. Birth doulas and death doulas do not do the labor or the dying themselves; they hold the space and keep faith that the crossing can be made. As a spiritual doula, I accompany people through the births and deaths of the soul: the endings that break a life open, and the long labor of becoming someone new.
The Scar Clan is the lineage of those who have been through the fire and lived to tell of it, and who wear their scars openly, as testimony. I have walked through my own complex trauma and loss, and the path I offer is one I cleared first in my own life. An elder of the Scar Clan walks alongside those still crossing, living proof that a wound can be survived and woven into a life of meaning.
Coaching, consultation and teaching are the forms the work takes. Spiritual accompaniment is the role I hold within every one of them.
2. What I Do, and What I Don’t
I do not diagnose or treat mental health disorders, which means you cannot use your health insurance for my services.
What I do is work with the parts of you. Every part, even the most destructive, took on its job to protect you, often long ago and at real cost. Together we help those parts find their path of healing, so they can set down what they have carried and let your wisest Self take the lead.
My orientation is nonpathological. Where the clinical lens looks for what is wrong, this work begins from what is whole: a core Self that is vibrant and intact, and parts that have been working overtime to keep you safe.
Internal Family Systems holds that there are no bad parts, and I take that seriously. The critic that never lets you rest, the one who numbs out at the end of the day, the rage that flares before you can catch it, the part that pushes away the very people you love: each one is a guardian who learned its trade in hard times. Its methods may be costing you dearly. Its intention was always to help.
We turn toward the parts that cause the most trouble and get curious about them. We ask what they are afraid would happen if they stopped, and what they have been protecting all these years. When a part is finally heard, it can let go of the burden it took on, and the energy it spent standing guard returns to you.
The healing lives in that relationship. As your parts come to trust your Self, the inner household reorganizes around its wisest member, and you begin to lead your own life from the center.
3. Neoshamanic IFS: Wellness in Three Worlds
The approach at the heart of my work is Neoshamanic IFS, which weaves Internal Family Systems together with shamanic practice, ritual, the body and the wisdom of elders. Its foundation is spiritual. I hold that our wellbeing rests on three worlds at once, and that healing stays partial when any one of them is left out.
The inner world is the household within: your Self, your many parts, and the knowing that lives in the body. Here we tend the relationships among your parts and between those parts and your Self, listening to breath and sensation as carefully as we listen to words. This is the ground Internal Family Systems maps so well.
The outer world is everything that holds us beyond our own skin: family and community, the land under our feet, the rivers and creatures and turning seasons. I come to this world as an animist. I understand the living world as full of beings in relationship with us, and I believe much of modern suffering grows from being cut off from them. Part of healing is coming back into belonging, among people who see you and on an earth that is alive and answering.
The metaphysical world is the one psychology has no place for. This is the realm of energy: the subtle currents that move through and between all living things, and the beings who travel them. Here we find God, Source, the Divine by whatever name you know it, along with angels, ancestors, spirit animals and guides. Not everything in that realm is benevolent. Some energies come from outside us and latch on, often at a time of trauma or when we are wide open, and they feed on fear and add a weight that was never ours to carry. Part of this work is discerning what belongs to you and what does not, and clearing away what has attached itself. Many people have sensed these presences all their lives and learned to keep them out of the therapy room, for fear the experience would be written up as a symptom. In this work the unseen is welcome. Sessions may include prayer, journeying, ancestral healing and work with helping spirits, always in keeping with your own beliefs. You do not need to share my cosmology to work with me; your own relationship to the sacred is the one we follow.
Wellness, as I understand it, is what happens when these worlds are woven back together, and the thread that runs through every one of them is relationship.
4. Inner Work Journeys: Spiritual Ministry
Inner Work Journeys is offered as spiritual ministry, not as psychotherapy and not under my counseling license. It is the kind of work many people go looking for as spiritual therapy. It is spiritual accompaniment, offered as ministry.
I am an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church, and I offer this work in that role, as a spiritual doula. Our sessions draw on ritual, prayer, ceremony, parts work and the wisdom of the body, held within a spiritual frame. It is not a substitute for psychotherapy or medical care.
5. Coaching
My work with Founders & Executives is coaching, including Internal Family Systems coaching and executive coaching. Coaching looks toward your leadership, your purpose and the life you are building. It is not psychotherapy, and it is not offered under my counseling license.
6. Consultation and Training
My work with Therapists & Practitioners, including IFS consultation and consultation in psychotherapeutic touch, is professional consultation and education for people who bring this work to others. The same holds for my Trainings, Workshops & Retreats. Consultation supports your practice; it is not therapy for you, and it does not make me responsible for the care of your clients. You remain responsible for your own work and for practicing within the limits of your own license or training.
7. When the Work Is Psychotherapy
If you and I agree that what you need is psychotherapy under my license, I will tell you so in writing before we begin, and you will receive the disclosure statement Colorado requires of licensed mental health professionals. Without that written agreement, our work together is not psychotherapy.
8. Medicine
When I speak of medicine, I mean whatever heals: breath, movement, music, nature, community, deep relationship, and for some people, plant medicine. Nothing on this site is an offer to provide, sell or administer any psychedelic or controlled substance.
9. What This Work Cannot Replace
Some conditions call for specialized clinical or medical care, such as OCD, eating disorders, active suicidal thoughts or addiction. If that is your struggle, please reach out to a clinician who specializes in it; my Trusted Colleague, Matteo Colaciello, is a good place to start. Nothing here replaces care from your doctor, psychiatrist or therapist, and please don’t stop any treatment or medication without talking with the person who prescribed it.
If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988 (the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US), or call 911.
10. About What You Read Here
The writing on this site, including the blog, comes from my own experience and practice. It is offered for reflection and general information, not as advice for your particular situation. Every person and every journey is different, and I cannot promise a particular result from any session, retreat or training.
Questions about any of this are welcome. Contact me and we can talk it through.