About me

I chose the cherry blossom as the symbol for this practice because it is special not because it survives, but because it blooms fully, briefly, and without holding back, knowing it won't last. The Japanese call it 物の哀れ (mono no aware), the bittersweet beauty of things that are fleeting. Adolescence is exactly that. So is the courage it takes to show up as yourself during it. That is what I am trying to cultivate in the girls I work with, in the mothers beside them, and in the way I show up to this work itself. Not waiting for conditions to be perfect. Blooming in the season you're in, as you.

I am a social worker, researcher, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) trained therapist working with girls and their families during one of the most demanding, and frankly most chaotic, seasons of girlhood we have seen. I am also a mother of daughters. This work is personal as well as professional — I know what it is to raise daughters in this world, and to want so much more for them than merely getting through it.

Sakura survives the cold before it blooms. I chose it as the symbol for this practice because that is exactly what I see in the girls and mothers I work with — that quiet, fierce capacity to endure and then bloom.

I have spent my career trying to understand what is needed for people to genuinely thrive. My doctoral research examined exactly that question, and the answer has shaped everything I do clinically: belonging, competence and autonomy are not secondary needs. When they are chronically unmet, anxiety and disconnection follow. When they are rebuilt, something genuinely shifts.

My work is grounded in a biopsychosocial framework. I am looking at the biological, psychological, social and environmental factors shaping a girl's experience, not just the presenting symptom. Every framework I draw on was chosen because the evidence holds and because I have seen what it does with real families in a real room:

• Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)

• Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

• Interpersonal Neurobiology

• Self-Reg

• Internal Family Systems (IFS)

• Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS)

I am interested in what is underneath behaviour, in what a child's system is trying to manage, and in what becomes possible when that is met with curiosity rather than pressure. And I am equally interested in the adults around her, because the nervous system of a girl in distress is always in conversation with the nervous systems of the people she loves most.

Qualifications

• PhD, Self-Determination Theory, Wellbeing and Transition

• Masters of Social Work (Qualifying)

• Master of Commerce (Strategic Management)

• Grad Dip Com (Human Resource Management)

• Bachelor of Science (Psychology)

Memberships and accreditations

• Full Member, Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW)

• Accredited Cool Kids CBT Provider, Macquarie University

• Internal Family Systems Level 1 Trained (IFS Institute)