About Me

About Me Headshot-min.jpg

I am a native New Yorker, in love with my city from the time I was tall enough to look out the window of a taxi: All those people! All the sparkling lights! 

Once I was old enough to cross a street, at six-and-a-half, this became a gritty and personal love: The pigeons! The strange people! The friendly people! The scary people! The soot! The dogs you could pet, and the dogs you could not pet!

Growing up in mid-Manhattan in the ‘60s and ‘70s, I was a protected, but somewhat free-range kid. When you’re given a little freedom, you become very attentive. This way of being alive and alert was the beginning of life as a creative human, and the beginning of becoming a therapist. The city pressed me to hear, see, feel, and understand. It also called me to write, draw, and paint.

I figured I was going to become a writer and illustrator. I certainly worked at it. In the course of three decades, I became a “blocked” writer, an unblocked writer, and an unpublished writer. I also became a Russian translator.  

In an incredible stroke of good fortune, translation with incoming Soviet refugees led me to social work –  and there was a powerful “click.” I became a therapist – an even more powerful “click.” A nerdy sort of person who’s always seeking to refine my work, I ultimately became an experiential therapist. Something one is always in the process of becoming!

So: I’m a New York therapist – it’s all baked together.  


 
 

(all photographs courtesy of Cal Eagle)

Education and Training:

  • BA, Barnard College, magna cum laude, 1978

  • MSW, Hunter School of Social Work, Honors, 1994

  • Graduate, Martha K. Selig Educational Institute, 1998

  • Advanced Training Program, Couples and Family Therapy, Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, 1998-2002

  • Certified in Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT), ICEEFT

  • Advanced Training in Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), 2012-present