What are you listening to right now?

Olivia Fern and FACESOUL

What are you reading right now?

Right now, I’m exploring everything my local library has to offer

What’s your favourite way to spend free time?

Sitting by the water with an iced coffee, dancing, writing, walking with my dog, going for long drives with no destination, cross stitching

Who do you work with?

People typically come to see me because they’re struggling with trauma, depression, anxiety, neurodivergence, or LGBTQIA+ issues. I work with ages 17+.

What would you like for a client to say about working with you?

I would hope that a client would say that they felt truly seen and understood by me during our work together. I hope they’d say that my office was a safe place to them to bring all of their concerns, and they knew I wouldn’t judge them. I hope that they’d say they developed more self-compassion and a greater understanding of themselves.

Have you ever read a book that changed your life?

Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky. I read this book in grad school and it transformed how I care for myself while I do the working of caring for others. I could read it over and over and learn something new about myself each time.

What is your favourite poem?

I want to age like sea glass

by Bernadette Noll

I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken. I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean. I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass—made not weak but supple. I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out. 

When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks and a hard place, I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next. Not stuck—just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels like to pause. And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to the next place that I am supposed to be. 

I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspected soul and carried along—just for the connection, just for the sake of appreciation and wonder. And with each encounter, new possibilities of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born. 

I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman I’ll become, they’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my exquisite nature, hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my well-earned patina. Neither flashy nor dull, just a perfect luster. And they’ll wonder, if just for a second, what it is exactly I am made of and how I got to this very here and now. And we’ll both feel lucky to be in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time. 

I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them.