I got into this work because I wonder a lot about how, why, and whether things are the way they seem to be.
It all started in 1975...
My sister and I were riding with our Dad in his Buick, going home from church. There must've been a sermon that Sunday that a five-year-old could understand because I was thinking really deep thoughts. From the back seat while practicing tying my shoes, I wondered, "What's behind everything?" I imagined telescoping out from our car and neighborhood to the edge of the universe, then slowly peeling away the whole starry dark scene, like a poster from a wall. I didn't get past the top left corner. It was incomprehensible, whatever was behind everything. Maybe a monster, I thought. Curious but afraid, I returned to tying my shoes.
Like you...
I've been through hard things -- bullying as a kid, mood and substance/eating disorders as a teen, a near-term stillbirth on my birthday two weeks after my wedding, family dramas and traumas, parenting fails and divorce, suicides of people I cared about, losing my sister to cancer, my own multiple sclerosis, and burnout due to low pay and high stress in early years as a therapist. There were also academic and athletic accomplishments, personal breakthroughs, and great love. Equally wakeful, the ups and downs, messengers appearing with a message I wanted or feared. Whether in the form of blissful or brutal truth, basic sanity would show itself.
The day a lightbulb went on...
I decided to become a therapist after attending a talk given by His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Rutgers University in 2005. Someone in the thousands-large audience asked him how we could conquer aggression in the world. He said something like: "Know yourself." It sounded so simple. I took his advice to mean that winning the war on aggression starts at home -- like really at home, within each of us. Given success in my own therapy, I believed that with the right training, I could help others learn that their "enemies" were very close and therefore workable. So I went to graduate school. Next up in 2011, my wondering what's behind everything found structure and encouragement in spiritual practice and study that continues to this day. In 2014, with my sister's blessing before she passed, Conditions for Change, LLC was formed, located since 2019 in a comfortable home office.
But for the grace of these...
I've learned a lot from professors, therapists, and authors renowned in their niches, and more than I can ever reciprocate from generous buddhist teachers and parental/sibling types, and humbling heartbreakingly much from people who've hurt me and people I've hurt. Culled from all these, my understanding of suffering is that all beings are inherently sane yet afraid, trying at times aggressively hard to be safe and belong and be loved in a world of distress and uncertainty. Given my experiences, I can't muster harsh judgement for anyone on the planet for their unscrupulous efforts and impact, let alone anyone genuinely seeking support to change. As we tune in to your ups and downs, what's behind it all shows itself. And it is no monster, I promise.
What happens in therapy here...
In a safe, respectful space, we will wonder about what has gone wrong for you. We will bring curiosity to assumptions about yourself and others you may not know you had. Through exploring how your habits of thought and behavior have come to be, it will become clear how they've both served and limited you. You'll be encouraged and equipped to cultivate a more flexible, daring sense of yourself and others, despite the pull of old ways. You can become less afraid of yourself and the world, less surprised and threatened by suffering, more aware of alternative possibilities, more inviting and appreciative of joy. This has been my path, too. Thanks on behalf of the countless hurt beings who hurt beings who will benefit from your courageous wondering about what is behind your own suffering.
