As a young child, my parents’ households were rife with adult mental illness and addiction - emotional, verbal, and physical abuse were strong everyday possibilities. 

As an only child who was sworn to harboring family secrets, I carried a crushing weighted blanket of tremendous fear and overwhelming parentification responsibilities. 

School was my only safe place, and as I grew to excel in that space, the dreaded overly-weighted blanket would lighten ever so slightly, month by month, year by year. 

I can only imagine how much sooner the weight might have lifted if School Counselors had been available to help me during those crucial years. 

My career in education stasrted 25 years ago as an elementary school teacher, wanting to provide a caring, compassionate laboratory of reliably respectful safety and increasingly consistent learning.  

However, I quickly realized that I was much more interested in helping children navigate their personal problems in life than any word problems in Math. 

As a result, for the past 20 years, I’ve dedicated myself to helping K-12 students recognize and appreciate their exceptional personal worth in the hope of them utilizing that value to enhance the lives of those around them in our school, community, and elsewhere.