My Story

My mission in life is to help children.  My professional course was set in high school when I wrote a paper on childhood suicide.  I was taken aback by the fact that suicide was the third leading cause of death for children under the age of thirteen.  I was struck by a powerful thought that childhood shouldn’t be that hard.  That was the turning point that led me to major in psychology in college and then to go on and get my Masters and Doctorate in psychology.

My entire professional life has been dedicated to helping children. I started doing therapy with them in 1983, working in mental health clinics, psychiatric hospitals and residential treatment facilities. In 1991, I was recruited by a group practice in Pensacola.  While with them, I was the psychologist for the Child Protection Team.  For a decade, I evaluated close to a thousand children who had been the victims of the worst cases of abuse in Santa Rosa and Escambia counties.  I choose to stop doing evaluations so more of my time and energy could go into treating young children with severe emotional problems, such as bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorders, anxiety and depression.  I earned a reputation for being one of the leading child psychologists and play therapists in Northwest Florida. After all these years, I still believe it shouldn’t be that hard to be a child.

Almost 23 years to the day after starting with the group, I felt I needed to go out on my own.  I set up my own  practice in the way I felt I could offer the best quality child therapy.

A little bit more

When I’m not at the office doing therapy with children, I volunteer my time to help children at Pensacola Little Theatre.  I am the chairperson and one of the founders of their children’s theater group, Treehouse Theatre.  I am very active in theatre: acting, directing, and play writing.  I am also an artist who enjoys sculpting and painting murals.