About

About Virginia

Through my own personal experiences, I learned early on in life the importance of supportive, encouraging connections, and the power of resiliency met with unconditional positive regard. With my clients, I strive to provide a warm, non-directive space in which each person may be fully present to themselves as we work together finding possibilities of hope, health, and growth. I utilize a person centered approach, in which the goal of therapy is to create space where clients are free to build upon their own strengths, enhance a positive sense of self, increase self -worth, and develop healthy coping mechanisms. Each client may seek therapy for different reasons, often because something in their lives has become uncomfortable, unhealthy, unsustainable, intolerable – but each client is so much more than their problem. I believe that each person has the wisdom and strength within them to nourish and empower not only themselves, but the systems of family, friends, and community around them. As a therapist, I am humbled to sit with clients as they connect with that inner wisdom and integrate it into their daily lives in new ways.


Before finishing my Master’s Degree in clinical social work in 2007, I worked for several years as a telecommunications relay operator connecting Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Speech Impaired people with the hearing and speaking world through real-time captioning, and participated in an Americorps internship program that involved both exploration of Christian ministry and social justice work in socioeconomically diverse communities. In between, my undergraduate studies took place in two much-different environments: a private women's liberal arts college in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, and Louisiana State University - Louisiana's flagship public research and land-grant university. In those two settings, I chose to open the door to a broad variety of learning in the humanities including history, philosophy, religious studies (including Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism), psychology, and biblical Hebrew. During my MSW studies in post-Katrina New Orleans, Louisiana, I worked with homeless and runaway youth in the French Quarter as well as working on the front lines of community disaster recovery – one family at a time.


Since then, as I have worked in an array of rural and urban communities providing social work services to individuals, families, and groups in community mental health, residential programs with at-risk youth, long-term care, substance abuse recovery, and military mental health, my life experiences have continued to be a powerful teacher and inspiration. I have connected through work, volunteer, and social avenues with people from birth to 100 years old, active duty military, veterans, military families, peace advocates, families raising children living on the autism spectrum, survivors of intimate partner violence, people living with severe and persistent physical and mental illnesses, people whose relationships range from the (outwardly) traditional to anything-but-typical, people developing new relationships with partners and children, people finding their “new normal” after loss … in every one I see another facet of the best of what it means to be human, even in the midst of grief, loss, challenges, setbacks.


An avid student of several therapeutic modalities and thought leaders in mental health, I integrate a variety of tools and perspectives including Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, psychodynamic and systems theories, depth psychology, mindfulness- and somatic-based therapies, existential and attachment theories. I enjoy working with youth and adults exploring relationships, family of origin concerns, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress (and growth), grief and loss, and transitions.


Qualifications

Years Practicing in the Mental Health Field: 12+

Graduate School: Tulane University School of Social Work

Year Graduated: 2007

License No. and State: LW60836768 Washington


Why "Evenstar"?

In the Lord of the Rings films, the lady Arwen gives a jewel called the Evenstar to Strider, Aragorn, as a token ... but it turns out that J. R. R. Tolkien's original Arwen Undomiel (the Quenya surname means "Evenstar") gives an unnamed jewel to Frodo, with these words:


"If your hurts grieve you still and the memory of your burden is heavy, then you may pass into the West, until all your wounds and weariness are healed. But wear this now in memory of Elfstone and Evenstar with whom your life has been woven!' ... And she took a white gem like a star that lay upon her breast hanging upon a silver chain, and she set the chain about Frodo's neck. 'When the memory of the fear and the darkness troubles you,' she said, 'this will bring you aid.' (Return of the King, Book VI, Chapter VI, "Many Partings")

I have had the joy of volunteering with an organization called Take This, which seeks to offer support and destigmatize mental health within the gamer community. You may have seen this group at PAXWest or other cons. They have a sort of motto - "It's not safe to go alone. Here, take this." I think of the "this" as something very like that Evenstar jewel, a talisman so that we remember even in the darkest moments that hope is not lost and the path to safety, the next companion, success, are there to be found so long as we keep walking.

My hope, the goal of my practice, is to offer aid and healing, and to help you find these within yourself, so that the hurts, the memory of the burdens you have carried, the wounds and weariness, the fear and the darkness, will not have the last word.