I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. I am the fourth of five children and enjoyed being raised in large family where my siblings were my closest friends growing up. My parents were active members in a local Presbyterian church and supported efforts in the larger Atlanta community and in missions throughout the world. I learned early on, through being in a large family and my parent’s involvement in missions, that the world was not about me. I was given an early sense of purpose to be of service to those around me. My father died in a tragic hiking accident when I was three years old. His death triggered my mother’s alcoholism which grew worse over my childhood years. The confluence of these events sent me into a deep depression and initiated me into the underworld. Through my education and community at church, I found reprieve through the reading of books and being surrounded by the loving care of my church community. I struggled in my teenage years with anxiety and depression and began to self-medicate through drugs and alcohol. Despite my internal struggles, I was able to stay functional in school and sports, as both these things were major outlets for me. In college, at the same time as my spirituality was growing through the intellectual and relational aspects of my faith, my substance dependance was worsening. Again, my alcohol dependance was hidden from those I loved the most. I was able to graduate college and participate in a year-long internship in Washington, D.C., working at an interfaith non-profit. My drinking started leading to serious consequences that caused me to withdraw for several months to seek therapy and personal healing. I always knew I wanted to seek higher education, and as I considered graduate school, I felt drawn to ministry and counseling. After visiting a couple of friends in different seminaries, I realized I did not feel a call to ministry within the church. I wanted to help those who were suffering on an individual level. In 2010, I began a master’s program in counseling at Richmont Graduate University, a school that had a faith component as part of its program. My faith blossomed in my years studying to be a counselor as I had excellent teachers and therapists who helped me understand the spiritual and psychological components of myself. I began to navigate some family of origin issues. I was also introduced to the work of C.G. Jung, who would become one of my greatest teachers. His insight into the value of dreams, something I had experienced since I was a child, his ideas surrounding the unconscious, and his insistence on the uniqueness of each person’s path were guiding lights for me. For my internship in school, I was the family counselor at the women’s center of MARR. This experience brought me face to face with the unhealed parts of my story. Through the education I received, the gift of hitting a personal bottom in my drinking, and regular attendance at 12-step meetings, I became abstinent from drugs and alcohol in 2012 and began to heal from the family disease of alcoholism. Through this experience, what had been mostly a religious understanding of God turned to a spiritual understanding. I began exploring philosophies outside the Christian tradition and seeing how all faiths seemed to have a similar core. After graduate school, I was grateful to have my first job be to help open the first Amen Clinic in Atlanta. Dr. Amen teaches a comprehensive approach that addresses the whole person – psychological, social, biological, as well as spiritual. In my four years at the clinic, I was able to deepen my understanding of how psychiatric illness manifests in the brain. Practicing cutting-edge, holistic treatment that focused on healing the mind-body connection opened me up to new methodologies of healing. I pursued a local yoga teacher training to become a Register Yoga Teacher (RYT-200) and also became trained and certified in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Brainspotting, both mind-body modalities for trauma healing. After getting licensed as a marriage and family therapist and a licensed professional counselor, I founded Sweetwater Practice, LLC to begin offering individual therapy sessions for those seeking holistic solutions to healing from trauma. I pursued a Ph.D. in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute to deepen my knowledge on the unconscious and to be able to study the work of Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung. I also joined a David Hawkins, MD book group and “A Course in Miracles” study group to deepen my understanding of the mind, body, and spirit connection. My prayer and meditation practices deepened as I sought guidance through authors like Leanne Payne, Charles Kraft, Paramahansa Yogananda, and Joe Dispenza. In 2024, my husband and I fulfilled a dream of his to return to New Mexico. My spiritual life has deepened as the pace of my life has slowed down, and I am able to live in closer communion with nature. I have maintained my private practice and see clients in Georgia over Zoom and have in-person clients in New Mexico. I joined Healing Seekers at the start of 2025 and act as program director. I am excited to see what healing and community may be built through this work.