Hey there!

My Story

Standardly, this space would serve to enumerate my professional qualifications. Though while important, what is more important in my estimation is to let you know who I am before and beyond those things. The coaching process is at its core a relational one, requiring trust and transparency. I believe that for you to feel safe being vulnerable, I need to offer the same. By sharing a bit about myself, I hope to create a space where connection and authenticity can thrive—and help you decide if I’m the right guide for your journey.

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In 2023, I earned my second Master’s Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, along with a certificate in Coaching, from Rider University. Yet, my journey into this work began long before then.

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The person and professional I am today has been profoundly shaped by a lifetime of diverse developmental experiences. I spent my early childhood in a liberal, middle class, white, suburban, Quaker family. While I was fortunate in many ways, I nonetheless found myself struggling with depression, isolation, loneliness, disordered eating, and suicidal ideation throughout my adolescence. For many years, I carried a deep sense of guilt and shame, questioning why I struggled so much despite the privileges I had. It wasn’t until later in life that I began to understand the ways in which generational cycles of addiction, alcoholism, and unresolved trauma had plagued my family and impacted me. These dynamics shaped my early experiences, the beliefs I held about myself, and the way I engaged with the world.

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As a result of worsening conflict and tension in my household during my middle school and high school years, I began to distance myself from my immediate family and found care and belonging within the homes and families of my few close friends. Consequently, my developing identity was shaped in large part by the social and cultural influences beyond those of my early childhood, particularly the influences of my Puerto Rican and Dominican surrogate families and my deep connection to the Trenton community. I also spent time over several summers living and working on the Navajo reservation in Kayenta, AZ, where I became intimately familiar with native traditions, practices, perspectives, and ways of life. These experiences deeply expanded my understanding of the power of resilience and importance of community.

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Despite my struggles around identity, disconnection from myself, social discomfort, and the consequences of disrupted primary attachments, I often excelled on the surface. I graduated high school with an International Baccalaureate diploma and moved on to college, where I found a sense of community in my multi-cultural sorority—building lifelong friendships along the way. I pursued a double major, secured a full-time job immediately after graduation, earned a Master’s degree, and took on leadership roles within various organizations. My work was recognized and celebrated, and I achieved several personal milestones. But despite my accomplishments, my journey would continue to be marked by on-going challenges that impacted my ability to feel safe, connected and well-resourced. Depression, suicidal ideation, and the felt impacts of family addiction remained constant undercurrents. Compounding this, a number of deeply painful experiences including sexual assault, betrayal, relational abuse, attachment trauma, the loss of loved ones, and my own battles with identity, alcohol use, and other self-destructive behaviors made functioning increasingly more painstaking.

I attempted to channel my pain into artistic expression and social justice efforts, calling on the creative spirit of my mother and the justice-oriented nature of my father. Immersing myself in both local and national social justice movements, I found purpose and gained recognition for my organizing work. Throughout this time, I would also see multiple therapists. While some were more helpful than others, I found it difficult to truly shift the paradigms that governed my life. I learned to survive, often keeping my struggles at bay just enough to continue functioning and meeting external expectations—but never quite thriving. Despite gaining knowledge and a multitude of tools and skills, I was deeply unhappy. By this time, I had been suffering with chronic pain off and on for many years, which was becoming more frequent and intense, a constant reminder of the toll my unresolved emotional pain was taking on my body. My satisfaction with my life suffered, my relationships suffered, my passion, productivity and performance suffered.

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However, through all of this, I have been guided by an unrelenting spirit of curiosity and seeking, a persistent desire to understand myself and others with greater clarity, compassion, and depth. I embraced this drive as a gift, which led me to explore the complexities of the human experience and to gather tools and resources for my own healing. Through this tenacious pursuit, I became connected with healers and teachers of my own who helped usher me to the truth of what it was I was seeking, and that which would become my greatest teacher of all: my Self. This process helped me to reconnect with the true essence of my being and begin to realign with all that was fundamentally true for me. It facilitated a powerful renewal of my faith and spirituality, grounding me in a revitalized connection to my core being. It restored my vision and felt sense of my fundamental goodness and deepened my understanding of the innate goodness in others. The tools, lessons, and insights that I have gathered and continue to collect through this forever journey are what I am now able to offer to others on their own paths of transformation. Today, my hope is to be able to use the totality of my experience to guide others back to themselves and to support them in creating lives, connections and communities that feel authentic, fulfilling, and filled with love.