Hi, I’m Michelle.

I am a licensed therapist with more than two decades of experience, a supervisor and consultant, a published writer, and a mindfulness teacher dedicated to helping people find solace, growth, and fulfillment.

I grew up in a family that avoided discussing and sharing the harder emotions. In the face of trauma, pain, and grief we soldiered on as best we could pretending these feelings weren’t inside of us. If someone couldn’t hold back they got the loud clear message they were weak or too sensitive. We called this “resilience”–but in reality, it was a type of denial.

I was aces at it. Even after the sudden and tragic death of our mother, I didn’t cry more than a few tears for the first 14 years. In late highschool and college I was a daredevil, I drank too much, I didn’t believe I would live till 30, and I had many psychosomatic complaints including migraines, sciatica, IBS, and more. Psychotherapy and introspection were not a part of my family culture, so I never once considered that my devil-may-care attitude or the health issues might be related to all those uncried tears.

I tried to never want anything I might not get. I avoided desire as best I could. To stand with my hand out having asked for something–waiting there hand still empty–felt like the biggest humiliation. So I focused very little on what I wanted. Actually, I had NO IDEA what I wanted back then. I couldn’t have told you. I didn’t know. Maybe I wanted to be safe enough to want something–but I could not have told you that. Instead of eradicating desire, desire went underground.

It was when I heard myself in my first ever therapy session suddenly sobbing and saying, "My mother died when I was nine!" that I realized the lasting impact of that silenced and forgotten grief. I was shocked. I had no idea it still mattered–I thought I was over it. But fourteen years later, at 23, I wasn’t over it. The grief had been waiting there for the right environment to bust out and finally be heard.

The idea that experiences inside of us are still there years later and their spontaneous emergence can powerfully link us directly to those times of the past—as if no years had passed—has been a fascination ever since.

I recognized that our bodies hold the key to well-being. The wisdom of the body emerges like this–in eruptions of emotion, in symptoms, in metaphors, in daydreams to tell us what is as of yet unheard and unmet in our experience. I embarked on a journey of self-discovery that began with learning to have my intellect make room and listen to what my body needed me to know. I discovered that the way out of pain is through it, necessitating a shift from intellectualizing and attempting to think our way out of difficulty to opening our hearts and embracing our pain.