About Jessica

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Each of us has the gifts we need to develop our full potential for joy, productivity, and loving relationships. Yet for many of us, childhood neglect or trauma, community or racialized trauma,  or more recent painful experiences may have resulted in thoughts and feelings that get in our way. We will collaborate to understand your challenges and build resilience and a path to liberation, exploring specific strategies that help you navigate tough times, understand your emotions, change unwanted behaviors, heal underlying sources of pain, and make meaningful connections. As we explore your challenges, you will develop your unique strengths and resources - your values, your insights, but also your Village, your connectedness - in an environment that is caring and safe, non-judgmental, and culturally-expansive.

My diverse practice is open to adults - with anxiety, shame, grief, or interpersonal conflict - and to parents supporting children's wellness under challenging experiences. We will develop your skills to manage emotions, choose your responses, address the roots of each challenge, perhaps in trauma, oppression, and attachment challenges, and work to identify/strengthen supportive environments to help you thrive.

Clients are welcomed with warmth and respect, as we explore together the challenges they face and seek liberation. I have completed certificates at The Trauma Center and The EMDR Institute. Also trained in mindfulness/self-regulation practices (MBCT); Decolonizing Therapy for Black Folks (Therapy That Liberates); Trauma Focused-CBT; Internal Family Systems. I describe myself as an "relationship-grounded, eclectic therapist," which simply means I highly value our getting to know one another, providing an opportunity to build trust, and introducing approaches  and resources, both in the self and in the Village, as they appear to me to be useful to each unique client.

In 2024, we will take a turn towards Group Practice, building healing communities through both therapy and follow-up peer support groups.

After 30 years of working in human services and community schools, I received my MSW from Morgan State University School of Social Work in 2011. My last several years of non-profit work centered on bringing trauma-responsive practices into school environments - classrooms, disciplinary policies, and teacher-parent relationships. As I developed my private practice, focusing on childhood experiences of complex trauma evolved as a natural specialty.

My approach to therapy is liberatory in orientation. Clients are welcomed with warmth and respect, as we explore together the challenges they face. First we will learn emotional soothing strategies to help each individual develop their innate capacity to care for themselves. But we don't stop there. If and when the client chooses, we will seek out the ways in which their childhood adverse experiences, whether as a result of systemic discrimination or personal history, have shaped their responses - and identify the beliefs that were formed and that have generated our emotional responses. And finally, once we understand, we will engage in healing practices that liberate us from those limiting beliefs. These may include individual healing, but also collective healing experiences and/or social action to gain a sense of self-efficacy and power.

I love to kayak and swim and I am obsessed with sunsets and sunrises. I am also a wife, mother and grandmother, friend, daughter, sister - all of which is the source of any gifts and wisdom I am able to share.