I am thrilled to share some incredible news...I've been named the 2025 Best Counselor in Ponte Vedra, Florida!

Out of over 41,000 votes in this year's, "Best of Ponte Vedra," I was selected for this honor and I am still taking it in. What a moment. What a gift. 

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." 

I took that first step years ago with heart, with fire, and a vision for a practice that would be human, healing, high performing, and never cookie cutter. A space that educates, elevates, holds people accountable, and reminds them how damn powerful they are no matter where they are in their lives. 

I built this thing brick by brick, laugh by laugh, and breakdown by breakthrough. And today being named Best Counselor in Ponte Vedra feels like one of those landings on the staircase...the kind you pause on, catch your breath, and smile. 

This honor is mine, but the magic is ours and I am so eternally grateful. Thank you, Ponte Vedra. Andiamo! 

My heart feels so full as I share that I have officially earned a Certificate in Military Mental Health from the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USU). 

Supporting those who serve and those tho carry invisible wounds with impossible strength has become one of the deepest honors of my work. 

This certification is not just another credential. It is a reflection of the intention, care, and precision I bring to the people I work with every single day. 

I love this work, I have chosen it with my whole heart, and I will keep showing up with everything I've got. 

If you are a provider, clinician, or someone serving military or first responder communities, keep going. The work is sacred and it matters more than most people will ever know. 

It's official! My heart feels so incredibly full and grateful after being honored as the Best Counselor in Ponte Vedra for 2024! 

This is an incredible honor and I am deeply grateful to everyone who made this possible. This isn't just an award- it represents the trust you have placed in me and the lives we have touched together. 

To everyone who voted, who believed in the work we are doing-thank you. This victory belongs to all of us and I am committed to being the best version of myself for you, every single day, and this recognition only fuels that drive. As I celebrate this moment, I am reminded that the journey doesn't end here-it's just the beginning. I am excited to keep making a difference in our community, pushing harder, reaching higher, and serving Ponte Vedra with the passion and purpose that got us here. 

Thank you to Ms. Bethany Cash who is one of the kindest client service representatives in our area who stopped by my office earlier this week to deliver this incredibly kind and thoughtful surprise. 

This recognition truly means the world to me and I am so thankful for all of the trust and incredible support from our wonderful community.  Thank you so much!

I am beyond honored and deeply moved to share that with over 8,000 votes from our incredible community, The Ponte Vedra Recorder, and www.pontevedrarecorder.com readers, I've been named Best Counselor/Therapist in the Best of the Beaches 2023!

To each one of you who cast a vote, who walked this therapeutic journey with me and who believed in the transformative power of counseling, my heart is overflowing with gratitude. Your support has not only propelled me to this moment, but has illuminated the path for others seeking solace, growth, and positive change. 

Your votes are not just a nod to me, but a testament to the strength and warmth of our community here at the Beaches, including Ponte Vedra Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, St. Augustine, Fernandina Beach, Ponte Vedra, and Atlantic Beach. 

To my remarkable clients, your trust and commitment to your journey inspire me daily. Here's to the transformative power of therapy and the amazing community that makes it all possible. I am profoundly thankful for each and every one of you! 

The human body is an amazing and complex system, and understanding how it works is essential for true healing. Most people are beginning to understand the importance of physical and emotional health, but few understand the connection between the two. That connection is fascia, the connective tissue that runs throughout the body and hold every blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber, and muscle in place.

​Fascia is also responsible for the transmission of neurotransmitters (e.g. serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine) throughout your body. This connective tissue transmits hormones such as adrenaline and oxytocin throughout your body as well. What does this all mean? The long and the short is that your fascia is deeply intertwined with the nervous system.

Fascia plays a major role in how we physically experience stress, including traumatic events. When the body experiences trauma, it creates tension in the fascia that can cause pain and limit movement. This tension can become chronic and prevent the body from healing completely. When emotional trauma occurs, the body also responds by creating tension in the fascia. Lack of moment, emotional stress, physical injury, and previous unresolved trauma can lead to physical and physiological changes to the fascia, which is often then associated with the symptoms most frequently seen in patients with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain, and inflammation. 

If you scroll throughout this blog, it is apparent I frequently refer to the vagus nerve in my posts. To briefly review what the vagus nerve is, the vagus nerve plays a key role in communicating changes that occur within the fascia to your brain. The vagus nerve assists in maintaining the channels of communication between the brain and body that helps regulate your autonomic nervous system (ANS). The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) which is associated with fight or flight will increase the speed at which your body wants to respond or react to stimuli and the vagus nerve provides a steady brake to slow things down. In situations that are traumatic or life threatening, this “emergency brake” can kick in abruptly, bringing you to a sudden and hard stop. Sometimes this may result in physical symptoms including nausea, dizziness, or fainting. 

Fascia is the largest sensory organ in your body and its primary role is to communicate information about what is happening in your body to your brain. When we experience trauma, we either move into freeze (immobility) or faint. If this trauma response does not resolve we can feel stuck and over time, lose our connection to our bodily sensations. We may feel more disconnected or dissociated. 

When working to heal trauma, it is so important to understand how these vital physiological and anatomical structures play a pivotal role in not only recovering from traumatic events, but to also understand how we can work with these structures using mind-body sensory awareness. The key is to progress slowly on the path towards reconnecting with your body and restoring a relationship to your body after trauma.

`I am counting down the days until the 2022 Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) Food Allergy Summit officially begins! This year the summit will be taking place in Orlando, Florida. 
I am both thrilled and honored to be co-leading a mental health presentation with Catherine Walker, who recently began studying as a freshman at Tufts University. Catherine has not let her food allergies define who she is and her story is so inspiring. You can read more about Catherine and her story here. 

I am also delighted to be leading an adults only workshop where will be discussing mental health and practical tips on how we can support overall mental well-being for adults and everyone in the family. 

You can learn more about FARE and the 2022 Summit by clicking here. 

Now that the June 15th deadline has passed and college coaches can reach out to high school athletes, the pressure felt by athletes is palpable. When I work with athletes, we collaboratively establish a mental game plan to assist them in preparation for a diverse variety of challenges ahead. 

For example, when a student athlete learns to focus on small, but impactful goals, I notice a shift in their mindset. As the internal pressure for perfection decreases, the motivation to instead achieve excellence increases. Instead of focusing on the outcome of performance, we work on developing intentional awareness to areas of the game they want to improve. 

I believe sports are played with the body, but are won in the mind. And if an athlete concentrates primarily on impressing others through their performance, they are creating extra-tension which clouds purpose, passion and can lead to burnout. 

If you or your student athlete is feeling overrun with pressure, let's get a game plan together. 

I want to offer a heartfelt thank you to Baptist Health and their wonderful Lead Chaplain, Reverend Lisa Solwold for generously inviting me to participate as a guest speaker for their 8-week series, "Nourishing Your Caring Spirit: Transforming the challenge of the past to the strength of the future" 

​I am so grateful for ALL healthcare providers, especially the front line clinicians who have been working non-stop throughout the pandemic. You are my healthcare heroes. 

I am beyond excited to share that I have been recently selected as a participant for the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee mental health registry. 

Cultivating athletic environments where there is both understanding and communication about mental health is critical. I am thankful to be part of a community of like-minded professionals who are continuously striving to provide whole mind and body support and care to all athletes. 

Your Nervous System
The most important thing to recognize about your nervous system is that it does not ask your permission or your opinion before it does its job to protect you. This is essential in keeping you alive. How so? If your nervous system perceives your repressed emotional world as a greater predator than your physical anxiety, symptom, pain, and so forth, it will lock into protective mode and cause the symptom - trigger the symptom - to divert you from thinking about your repressed emotional world that you have no control over.

Your Gut
Deep in your brain, the hippocampus checks every sensory input it receives and compares it against our memories and experiences. If something is not right, the amygdala which is our alert system right next door to the hippocampus is activated. The amygdala communicates through sensations that you feel in your body and does so by sending a channel of information into your gut and other organs via the vagus nerve. 

The gut feeling you have should not be confused with emotions. Rather, it can help you process emotions both present and past. For example: imagine you feel like there is a lump in your throat when you feel upset. If it feels safe to do so, go into your body and ask: what is this lump sensation in my throat? Does it want to move or expand? What does it need from me in order to do so? 

A professional athlete who was once my patient had massive anxiety when younger players were drafted and/or traded to play on his team. He did a very brave thing: he went and got to know them and helped his amygdala learn that it was safe and friendly. How so? He learned to how to shuffle between all levels of the brain including: reasoning and logic, feeling and emotion, and wisdom of the body. By doing so, he was able to feel more integrated, less in conflict with himself, and feeling much more connected to his teammates.