About Me

Hello, I’m Susan. 

However it is you found your way to my website today, welcome.

It is difficult to encapsulate who I am, what I do, and why I do it. Words struggle to capture the intimacy of human interaction — the gift of walking through pain and suffering with clients of all ages and backgrounds. I love my work. I love my life.

But that wasn’t always so. I have struggled too.

My memories begin at a young age, just shy of four, acutely aware of my sadness. Constantly told to “Smile. Be happy. No one likes a depressed kid.” I was too young to know what depressed meant, of course. But I understood anger. I remember my parents’ cocktail parties — sneaking drags from cigarette butts left in the ashtrays, stealing off with leftover gin and tonics. I remember years of destructive behaviors, still too young to know it was all a cry for help.

I remember a creative writing class in middle school. I wrote a story about the relationship between a violin and its bow, linked in safety, loyalty and comfort. They had each other. I felt alone.

The cloud did not lift. Ruin followed. Drinking, mostly, and what drinking destroys. But therapy saved me —sitting and talking with others, all of us accepting one another. The experience of working through my own feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing on the path to sobriety led me to study therapy itself.

I am a graduate of UCLA and the School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine University, where I learned the theory and techniques of therapy, allowing me to craft a process specific to the needs of each individual client. But while therapeutic technique is the bones of the process, the heart remains the simple support of human connection.

Like the violin and its bow, I am here to meet you where you are. Exactly where you are.

Come sit.