About Me
Movement has been an essential part of my life. Running, climbing and cycling have been ongoing companions in knowing and understanding my developing self.
My earlier years were spent in mountains and teaching wilderness education courses throughout the US. The call of wild places has traveled from the physically remote to the deep internal wilds of my current life filled with raising three children with my spouse and the fullness of family. I have come to know both parenting and marriage as critically informative aspects of my therapy work with clients. Failure, loneliness, uncertainty, anger and my connection to work and livelihood have all been deep and lasting interests of mine, as well as real lived experiences for me.
At this ‘noon time’ phase of my life, in between the youth of my children and the old age of my elder family members, I am living my personal life and practicing my professional one as genuinely as I ever have, both accenting the other in their meaningfulness. While the world unfolds through pandemic, unrest, daily struggles, garden variety disruptions and losses, the place for intentional and therapeutic human connection is as potent and healing as it has ever been.
Background
Teaching, and in particular, outdoor education have been significant parts of my working and personal life.
As a student at the Pacific Crest Outward Bound School in the 1980’s I learned more about my own internal abilities and resources than I had previously known. The seeds of working with both people and nature together were then established. I spent the first half of my working life teaching Outward Bound courses for young and older adults throughout the US, working in mountains, rivers, and wilderness areas. But it was the group processes and interpersonal dynamics, part of each expeditionary group, that were of most interest to me. My earlier notions of working as a mountaineering or climbing guide were abandoned in favor of deepening opportunities to work more closely with the emotional and psychological lives of others.
Since then, I have worked in wilderness based therapeutic treatment programs, family therapy centered programs, public health, small group therapy practices and my own private practice. My training has included graduate work in wilderness therapy and transpersonal therapy, gestalt therapy, as well as continual training and supervision, reading and engagement in my own therapeutic work as a client.
