I am a clinical psychologist who began my career as a nurse in pediatric oncology. I work with adolescents, young adults, families, and organizations facing serious loss, illness, trauma, or bereavement, to help people struggling to understand and find their way through their challenges. I offer a safe and supportive relationship, in which counseling, therapy, exploration, or educational programs take place. I believe that talking with a professional
who understands the many psychological and emotional challenges when coping with illness or the grief process, can provide information, as well as an environment to explore one’s experiences, strengths, weaknesses, regrets, and hopes, all of which can be important in the process of figuring out how to move forward when faced with adversity.
The primary focus of my work has been illness, loss, and grief. I bring a wide range of experience and interests to my work, which includes clinical work, teaching, program development and research, in hospitals, home care, hospice, organizations and academic settings. I am a member of the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement. For fifteen years I was the Director of the National Center for Death Education, Mount Ida
College, where I ran programs for professionals on caring for the dying and bereaved. Additionally, I was a Clinical Instructor in Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.
I have recently returned to Massachusetts after a decade living in Zimbabwe. I moved there in 2011 to spend a year as a Fulbright Scholar at Women’s University in Africa, Harare, Zimbabwe. I then stayed for a decade consulting in Zimbabwe and other southern and eastern African countries, providing direct care and assisting organizations in program development, capacity building and integrating mental health into their service delivery to improve care provided to children, adolescents and young adults made vulnerable by HIV, bereavement, trauma, poverty, and other factors. In addition to my private practice, I continue my consulting work.
I am deeply grateful to all who have allowed me into their world, often one vastly different than my own. They have been, and will continue to be, my greatest teachers about life, resilience and the strength of the human spirt.