Why?

People ask me all the time why I became a therapist and I find that one of the easiest and the most difficult things to answer because my journey has been a personal yet unconventional one.

I always knew I wanted to help people and back in high school I wanted to go to med school.  I got into some great colleges and settled on Providence College.  It was then I realized being a doctor was not for me when I couldn't pass Chem 101.  Let me back up a little though.

I grew up in a really small town in New England, three stop lights, no fast food restaurants and only 120 kids in my graduating class.  Everyone knew everyone.  Things were pretty ok up until high school.  Life sort of took a turn at that point and I was picked on and bullied to the point that I would call my mom every day crying and telling her I just wanted to come home.  Then we had to use the pay phone, there were no cell phones.  My junior and senior year were the worst and those girls made me feel like I was worthless.  I went onto college though, but soon found PC was not for me.

I started having panic attacks ( although we didn't know it then) and ended up not going back for a second semester.  I transferred to Charleston Southern University and began what I thought would be the best years.  They were to an extent.  I was majoring in Youth Ministry with a minor in Psychology because I knew I wanted to help people.  I met a guy and we got married in 1998 ( I was young and stupid) and well it wasn't meant to be.  It was abusive and I left college for a period of time to cover up what was happening to me.  Thankfully we were only married for 16 months.

I ended up back in college but was told that being a Youth Minister was off the table as no one would hire anyone who had been divorced, welcome to the south.  At this point I just wanted to graduate so I earned a degree in Religion with my minor in Psychology.  I was working as an admin assistant and at that point just wanted to graduate.  At that point I had met my now husband and he encouraged me to go back to school and finish the classes needed to get my degree in Psychology so I did.

In 2002 I enrolled at Webster University for grad school and at this point was engaged to be married.  I earned my MA in Counseling and it was then that I knew I wanted to open my own practice.  I was working at a battered women's shelter as the children's counselor and to say I loved it was an understatement.  I was working in a field I loved and with kids.  It was the dream. Then in 2003 shortly after getting married my husband and I decided to move to NJ.  By this point we were already actively trying to get pregnant and it wasn't working.  We figured a change of scenery might not be a bad thing.  

I finished my MA in 2004 and we began to pursue what our options were for having a baby since it wasn't working on our own.  I was working at the time with adults who were severely mentally ill and living in group homes/apartments.  It was not my ideal job but I still got a sense of joy in what I was doing every day.  We ended up with an RE that we liked and eventually beginning the journey of trying to conceive (ttc).  We went through rounds of meds and IUI's with no success.  We eventually were able to get in on a trial/study for IVF as we knew there was no way that we would have afforded it otherwise.

In 2005 we underwent the process of prepping for our IVF and let me tell you that is not for the faint of heart.  In November of 2005 we went through our retrieval and eventual transfer of three (3) embryos.  Now that is almost unheard of.  We were thankful to have conceived and I was pregnant with twins.  On July 18, 2006 my girls were born.

In those 11 years we have gone through many an up and down including the death of my brother, the divorce of my parents, my FIL cancer diagnosis and In laws living with us to our eventual move from NJ to where we live now in NC.  Whew there is/was a lot more and I worked many a job in those 11 years also.  You see we didn't have family in NJ for the first 6 years of the girls lives so we made due.  J worked full time during the day and I worked full time in the evenings to accommodate.  I worked in home therapy with children and adolescents, admissions in a psych hospital, foster care programs to eventually working in a group practice (can we say dream job).  

In 2012 not long before my girls 6th birthday I started my own practice.  I did it I was going solo and doing what I loved.  My focus for the first 4-5 years of my practice has been on children & adolescents with a smidge of what I really love which is working with woman who are going through infertility, pregnancy loss and PPD.  I love working with kids but as my girls get older I find it harder to not feel burnt out.  My passion for working with that age group stemmed from being bullied as a child I never wanted another child to feel as alone as I did.

My passion now stems from knowing how difficult infertility was and still is and wanting to let women know they are not alone.  That as a therapist I get all aspects of not just the immediate emotional needs but the long term ones as well, the ones that most people can never understand.  The guilt of having to discipline your child when you worked so hard to conceive them, the idea of never being a good enough mom and just the general idea of still cringing when you see a pregnancy announcement.  

Know that you are not alone and that together we can believe in tomorrow.