About Sage: Somatic Therapist for OCD, Trauma, Anxiety & Grief
I'm a licensed somatic therapist, and before anything else, I want this page to give you a real sense of who you'd actually be sitting across from, not just a list of credentials.
Outside of session, I try to live an embodied life full of intention and ritual: nature, community, love, laughter. You'll usually find me somewhere near water or trees, tide pools, bluff walks, redwood trails with my dogs trailing behind me. I decompress with strength training, ceramics, plant caretaking, questionable reality TV, and tea in more varieties than is probably reasonable.
I didn't come to somatic work through a textbook. I came to it through my own body, and through learning early on that physical and mental health were never separate things to begin with. Traditional mindfulness never worked for me; being asked to sit still with discomfort felt like one more way of disconnecting, not less. What actually helped was learning to move with my body instead of managing it into submission. Along the way, I also had to find my own relationship to compassion, learning how to hold other people's pain without losing myself in it, and discovering that compassion could be something embodied and alive rather than something that wore me down. That's the practice I bring into the room.
I sit across from you as someone who has been deeply committed to, and intimately aware of, what therapy can actually ask of a person. I don't believe healing is a fixed destination called wellness. Our bodies and our lives are dynamic; we all carry grief and trauma in some form. What I believe in is the sacred work of attuning to that, of having someone truly bear witness to your journey rather than just steer you toward a goal. That kind of relationship is what changed things for me, and it's what I try to offer everyone who sits across from me.
Curiosity and compassion guide me here, in this work and in my own life. And despite how heavy or daunting this work can look from the outside, I find it deeply joyful. Sitting with people in the middle of their hardest chapters is one of the most alive things I get to do.
You might be in the right place if you:
Want a therapist who's direct and warm, not clinical or performatively calm
Have already done a lot of therapy and are tired of insight that doesn't change how you feel in your body
Are looking for someone attuned to intersectional identity, whether that's how you love, how your body moves through the world, or how you've been treated by systems that weren't built for you
Are curious about somatic therapy, EMDR, OCD treatment beyond ERP alone, trauma work, anxiety, or grief support
Experience
I did my undergrad in Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz and my master's in Social Work at the University of Denver. I started out in sex education in 2012, which is where I first fell in love with helping people understand and advocate for their own bodies. Everything I do clinically now, somatic therapy, EMDR, IFS, I-CBT, grew out of that same thread.
I'm a member of the Stella Nova referral network, a group of independent therapists who share similar values. Compassionate Tides is its own independent practice; if you found me through Stella Nova, you're in the right place.
Compassionate Tides is a private pay practice. I don't accept insurance directly, though I can provide a superbill for out-of-network reimbursement and offer sliding scale openings. I see clients via telehealth throughout California, with a client base concentrated in the SF Bay Area.
Healing isn't always something you can think your way into. If you're ready to try a different way in, I'd love to talk.
Go Banana Slugs!