About Emily

In my early twenties, panic attacks abruptly narrowed the exciting and newly expanding life I’d been experiencing as a student at the University of Toronto. With the support of a skilled Gestalt therapist, I gradually regained stability, completed my university degree, and began a 20-year career working with children with autism and their families. The work was deeply meaningful, though I came to recognize that unresolved trauma in my nervous system was still shaping my experience behind the scenes.

In 2006, I completed Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program and established a regular meditation practice, increasing my understanding of my internal world and my compassion for beings great and small. I later trained at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto, began practicing as a student therapist in 2014, and became a Registered Psychotherapist with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario in 2017.

My ongoing search for healing led me to train in Somatic Experiencing®, Kathy L. Kain's Touch Skills for Trauma Therapists, and Kathy L. Kain and Stephen J. Terrell's Somatic Resilience and Regulation, and to receive these somatic therapies as a client. These approaches transformed both my personal life as a client and professional work as a therapist. Learning how the body holds and resolves survival responses expanded my sense of freedom and vitality. Today, I integrate Gestalt therapy with somatic approaches to support clients in healing trauma, strengthening nervous system regulation, and moving toward the lives they want.

My psychotherapy practice is located on the ancestral land of many Indigenous nations including the Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabe, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. A portion of my profits goes to The Native Women's Resource Centre of Toronto.  I am committed to anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and feminist principles in my work and daily life. I strive to create a therapeutic space that honours lived experience, challenges systemic inequities, and affirms the rights and dignity of people of all genders, races, cultures, religions, abilities, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic backgrounds. My ancestral roots are in Western Europe. I am neurodivergent. I am bisexual and trans-allied.

I am “Auntie Em” to my beloved niece and nephew. Proud cat mom to my two cats - who sometimes make cameos during virtual sessions! Outside of my work, I am passionate about singing, poetry and songwriting, dancing, comedy, nature, and time with loved ones.

The sudden loss of my dear mother last year profoundly shaped me, deepening my compassion and understanding of grief and love, and my curiosity about consciousness and mysteries of the universe.