I spent years standing at the front of a classroom, and I was good at it. But somewhere between the lesson plans and the report cards, I kept noticing something. The moments that lit me up were never about the curriculum. They were the conversations in the hallway, the student who stayed after class just to talk through something hard, the quiet look of relief on a young face when someone finally listened. I was teaching, but my heart kept pulling me somewhere else entirely.

Eventually, I had to be honest with myself. The subject I was most passionate about was people, not the material I was hired to deliver. So I made the decision to go back to school and become a counselor. It was not a small thing to walk away from a career I had built. But helping people has always been my greatest motivation and my deepest source of personal gratification, and I could no longer ignore that.

My counseling internship opened a new question: what kind of counselor did I want to be? I threw myself into research, reading everything I could, turning the question over and over. Then one session changed everything. I was working with a couple, supporting them through relationship strain and substance abuse, when the conversation shifted. Intimacy came up. And something rang inside me, clear and immediate, the way certain truths do when you finally hear them out loud. It was one of those moments you cannot manufacture or plan for. The more I researched sex therapy after that session, the more certain I became. The certainty did not arrive all at once; it built steadily, the way a good story does, until I could not imagine going any other direction.

I have always been a reader. Romance, mystery, stories that pull you into another world entirely and leave you thinking differently when you surface. Books have been a private pleasure my whole life, and for a long time that stayed separate from my work. But something has been shifting. I am in the process of writing my own book now, weaving together what I know as a therapist with what I love as a reader, all in service of promoting sex positivity and sexual exploration. I will be honest: I am not entirely sure where this new chapter leads. But that uncertainty feels right. It means I am still growing.

My days reflect the person I have been working to become. I wake well before sunrise and spend those quiet hours organizing my thoughts, sitting with the solitude, letting my mind settle and prepare. Then comes the work I was made for: sitting with clients, holding space for their most vulnerable conversations, and somewhere in the margins, feeding my imagination on the page. My evenings belong to my family. Every part of that day serves a different piece of who I am, and I have learned that honoring all of those pieces is not indulgence. It is how I stay whole.

The people I work with are individuals and partners who are ready to move toward something more: more connection, more satisfaction, more honesty about what they need and want in their intimate lives. They often carry things they have never said out loud to anyone. I know what it is to sit with something unspoken, to sense that a different life is possible but not yet know how to reach it. That is exactly why I do this work, and why I show up for it every single day.