I am a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW) who works with children, teens, and adults, to cope with trauma, loss and grief, anxiety, and depression.  I also enjoy working with parents and children who are navigating the complex emotions, identify formation, grief and loss, and attachment challenges that can arise in foster and adoptive families. I use a person-centered, strengths-based, integrative approach grounded in synergetic, trauma-informed, attachment-based, somatic, and narrative theories. I have completed specialized training programs to provide culturally responsive services to BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ youth and families, and I am working toward my Registered Play Therapist (RPT) Phase 1 certification.

Before becoming a therapist, I worked as an educator in K-12 settings, nonprofit agencies, and higher education. As an English teacher and creative writing instructor, I became fascinated with the power of story. Stories can limit us or liberate us, shackle us or shape us. Sometimes these stories are the ones other people tell about us; sometimes they are the ones we tell ourselves.  Either way, in my therapeutic work with you, we will work together to transform the limiting stories into stories of purpose and possibility that honor your unique life experiences, culture, and history. Sometimes this storytelling takes the form of play therapy; other times it expresses itself through art or music.

In my work, I value your intersectional experience as a resource and an asset and welcome you to bring your whole self. Some of my identities: I am a neurodivergent, mostly able-bodied, nonbinary, white person. I was raised in an adoptive family in the rural Midwest. I spent fifteen years as a single parent. I am part of a mixed-race and interfaith marriage.

In my free time, I am most likely to be found hiking Atlanta’s urban forests and communing with trees; writing songs, stories and poems; puttering in my garden; or snuggling with one of my three favorite felines.

K is supervised by Kadesha Adelakun, LCSW, RPT-S, PMH-C  and Laura Ladefian, LPC, RPT-S, CPCS. K can be reached at k@gaiacounseling.com.