About Me

Writing this was as much for me as it is for you. I believe it’s important for people to know that helpers and healers and therapists are human and still in their own work. None of us are done. To be vulnerable is to heal.

My name is Stephanie. My pronouns are she/her. My dad was military so I was born in Japan. But I’ve lived in Colorado the vast majority of my life.

I met my husband while living in Las Vegas and training as a dietitian. He was not what I thought I wanted. But everything I needed. We never had a formal wedding. But just sort of kept choosing each other.

Eight years after meeting him, we had a child. And then that child stole my heart. For me, becoming a mother became an unexpected death and rebirth in my life. I am still rising out of those ashes.

I have many friends. But few people have really seen me. Slowly, this is changing.

I am supremely grateful to have a life partner who sees me. He might know me more than I know myself. He’s ahead of me. He challenges me. He infuriates me. He holds space for me and all the deep things. Like everything in life, we are a constant work-in-progress.

I read voraciously. I’m addicted to education. And I hoard information. Books. Articles. More material than I could read in a hundred lifetimes. I’m looking for something in all the books. And part of me knows this is not where I’ll find what I’m looking for.

Formally, I’m a Registered Dietitian. I also have a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and I practice as a Licensed Professional Counselor. MA, RD, LPC. Who cares, honestly. I think these letters are the least interesting thing about me.

None of the above is actually who or what I am.

I’ve struggled with food and body-image most of my life. Only recently has that begun to shift in a deep way.

I am obsessed with self-help and my personal process. I spent many years working to “accept” myself, only to realize the “self” I thought I had “accepted” was not the real me.

I was born into a world that couldn’t hold space for my depth. I was too much. My questions were too big. This was part of my trauma.

I spent a lot of my childhood feeling lonely. But it was not always a dark lonely. More of a curious lonely. Why am I here? Whose hands are these? Why do we care about this? What’s the point? Where did I come from? What happens after we die?

It is not lost on me that my privilege allowed me to ponder these existential things. I was safe and loved enough that my mind was given permission to ponder.

I often cried myself to sleep at night. Usually because I was thinking about death. And the questions no one could answer.

I have struggled with sleep and fatigue most of my life. Even as a kid, I could never sleep. I sort of came into this world wired with a hypervigilence I don’t understand.

I was raised in the Catholic church to appease my Italian grandmother, but neither of my parents are very religious. My dad is firmly atheist. It was a confusing time.

Upon asking the question, I was once told by a youth director that my dad probably wouldn’t go to heaven. I could tell you every detail of the Chipotle we were sitting in when that conversation transpired. I decided God was not for me. Not if he couldn’t love my dad.

I went on to believe I had two choices in life. Closed-minded Christianity or Atheism. So I chose the latter. But nothing ever sat right.

When I was young, I was told I was pretty on the outside. And so that’s what I believed I was. A pretty girl. Be pleasant to the eye. Oh, and don’t be a burden. Go ahead and let everything else go.

I began to bury all the deep things. I buried all the questions.

When all you are is a pretty girl, the stakes are high. You have to stay pretty. Which often means you have to stay thin. There is always someone beating you at this.

I struggled with disordered eating for most of my adolescent and young adult life. I suffered as a female living in a world that taught me that thin is the most important thing a woman can be.

My eating disorder was violent. I restricted. Starved my darling body. Then binged to fill the emptiness. No amount of thin took away the longing.

I am extraordinarily privileged. I am white. I am financially comfortable. My family paid for my education. I have never wanted for anything. Accept to be seen, of course.

I am privileged. And I suffered.

I am grateful. And I hurt.

My parents are nice people. They are beautiful people. They are loving people. They are nice, beautiful, loving people. And I’m not sure if they know me.

My younger sister needed a lot. So I learned to be ok all the time. That is what’s best for my parents, I thought.

I have felt alone most of my life. No matter how many people I have. I’m alone. Alone in here. With these thoughts. These big feelings. Does everyone have them? Why aren’t we talking about them?

Pain is a funny thing when it has nowhere to go. It can morph into different things. It can shape shift. Sometimes it feels like the pain is adequately stuffed away. Other times it emerges as depression. A weighted darkness filling every corner of your being. Most days… it lived within me as the ache of fatigue.

If you ask anyone who knows me… what’s her pain? Sleep, they would say. She’s tired all the time. It’s true. I am tired all the time. I’m still working on this. And I live a good life in spite of it.

I’m still often confused by life. I don’t fully get it. I seek to understand it with my mind. That hasn’t really gotten me anywhere.

I have a hardened exterior. A part of me who feels right all the time. She knows better than most people. She sits on a pedestal, sneering down at everyone living in the dark. She does a good job protecting the part of me who’s afraid she’s inadequate. Utterly stupid and knows nothing. Don’t let anyone see that reality.

Beneath the right fighting, and the judgments, and the ego, there’s a soft squishy heart. A deep desire to connect, clouded by a fear that it’s not possible. This is improving.

In my late twenties, early thirties… I walked back into the world of spiritual seeking. Believing in nothing no longer made sense to my heart. This cannot be it, I thought. There has to be more. I think can feel it. I think I might know it.

Once I decided to stay open to new possibilities, life began showing up. Handing me things. Taking me places. It has been astounding. It often takes the air right out of my lungs. Perhaps these are not coincidences.

Turns out God isn’t a judgmental being sneering down at us from the sky. God is just Love. And so are we.

I am working with psychedelic plant medicines. Watching as they open the doors of my being, allowing me to swim around in the truth of my pain. They are showing me who and what I really am. It’s scary. And it’s good. It will soon become a part of my work with others.

This is what it means to heal, I think. Carrying on. Asking the hard questions. Looking for the things you feel are missing. Everything is somewhere. If we keep looking, I think we’ll eventually find what we’re looking for.

As a therapist, I have a unique vantage point. I get a front row seat to the global pain of being human. That we are all struggling. And then struggling to talk about it. I love talking about it. I live for talking about it.

Healing requires vulnerability. I just can’t find a way around that. I have been hiding from everyone who knows me. You have seen glimpses of me. But I’m mostly hiding. This has begun to change.

Who am I? Who emerges as we heal? We are so afraid of the answer to these questions. What will it look like? What will it feel like? Who will stick around? Who will leave?

It feels safer to lock ourselves away because at least that guarantees a warm body. If I am who you need me to be, you won’t leave me. I need you to not leave.

But we are so starved for true connection. So desperate to be seen. And when the pain of that starvation becomes just enough… when it gets to a point where the discomfort of continuing on in this way becomes bigger than the fear of awakening… we start to move back toward authenticity. In many ways, we have no choice. We will always return to who and what we are.

Luckily when we leap, the net appears. This has been my experience. I’m letting myself out. Slowly. Gently. Just a small step here. A small step there.

In many ways it’s becoming hard to be a clinical therapist. Sitting so far from people. That distance. That seeming power differential. I want to connect. You want to connect. Let’s try and connect, ok? I am so comfortable with your pain.

I’m grateful to be doing the work I do every day. I cherish the connections I make inside therapeutic relationship. It’s devastatingly rare to witness true pain, true vulnerability, and then see healing happening in real time when that pain is simply witnessed and held. When a person is finally feeling seen and radically accepted. This is everything.

I witness profound healing and change in my clients every day. It’s never because of me. It’s always because of them. We are all in this together. And we are brave.

If you’re still here, that means a lot to me. Thanks for reading, and thanks for seeing me. If I get the opportunity, I would love to see you too.