The Person Behind the Practice

Relationships are the most important and the most complicated thing in most people's lives. I know this not just as a counsellor — but as someone who has lived inside that complexity for as long as I can remember.

I grew up in a family that separated. I watched the ground shift beneath people I loved, in ways nobody quite had language for. Later, I married. Then I separated. I became a single mother. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I discovered what I was actually being trained for — not by any institution, but by life itself.

For twenty years I worked one-to-one with people as a portrait photographer — learning to read what someone was carrying before they said a word, learning to create the conditions where something real could emerge. It turns out that is exactly the work of a counsellor. The room is different. The attunement is the same.

What I have come to understand — through the professional and the deeply personal — is that separation does not have to mean damage. It can mean clarity. It can mean redesigning your life with real intentionality. And most importantly, it can mean becoming someone your children will look back on and recognise as sturdy, loving, and at peace with themselves. That is what I want to help you find.

I work as a counsellor and accredited mediator specialising in grief, loss, transition, and family separation. My clinical approach is Emotionally Focused Therapy — one of the most rigorously researched therapeutic models in the world. I hold Life Membership of ICEEFT, the international organisation founded by the late Dr Sue Johnson, and I am a member of NZAC and NZCEFT. As an NMAS Accredited Mediator, I understand both the emotional and the formal landscape families face — which means I can help you navigate it, or help you avoid the parts that don't serve you.

The four rooms I work across — counselling, relationship therapy, mediation, and the space where all three meet — exist because people's lives don't fit neatly into one category. Neither does mine. And neither, I suspect, does yours.