A life shaped by
becoming.

Before I became a therapist, I was an actor.

I grew up in theater and eventually performed professionally here in New York. That life shaped how I understand people. We are always becoming, yes, but rarely in a straight line. Theater taught me to listen for what lives underneath the words, to stay curious about motivation, and to stand inside uncertainty without rushing to clean it up.

Building a character, line by line, meant looking at the whole history of a person through the play, the culture, the time, and the music. Years later, I recognized that same kind of curiosity in the clinical intake: walking with someone through their biological, psychological, social, and spiritual history, trying to understand not only what happened, but what it came to mean.

Then came graduate school. Mental health counseling gave me theory, language, and a clinical foundation and, yes, another kind of performance. Theater had already given me something harder to name: presence, imagination, and a deep respect for the stories the body remembers. I still move between those worlds. Structure and spontaneity. Insight, then action. Who we’ve been, and whoever we may be becoming now.

Maybe that’s why I think of therapy as a rehearsal space for life. An old pattern enters the room. A part of you protects a wound that once needed protecting. Together, we can slow the scene down and get curious. We might even try another response. Not so you can perform a better self. So you can feel more like yourself.