A New England-native now rooted in The Netherlands, I am a clinical and developmental (research) psychologist by profession and an artist at heart. My venture into story-telling began at a young age, with impromptu tales about fairy siblings in space whispered over the bunkbed railing to my sister. This morphed into typing chapter books, scribbling down plays, and sharing short stories. The only area that didn’t seem to interest me quite as much was, in fact, poetry - not because I didn’t enjoy reading it, but because the stern structure felt to confining for the adventures and characters I had in my mind.

It was only after moving to The Netherlands in 2017 that I realized that, when flipping through the random sentences scribbled here and there of ideas to add into something larger, that they could actually stand on there own. Poetry became a new vessel of story-telling - one where I was not confined to long hours of writing hundreds of pages before I could share a message important to me. Instead, poetry was a simple rowboat, contrasted to the cruise ship of my novels (which also rarely made it out of the port).

Within a year, I had found my home in the poetry community in Amsterdam. My first performances centered around my experiences; However, soon I began my project Take What You Need, where I worked 1-to-1 with dozens of individuals who needed help in healing. I would sit with them, hear their stories, and then help process their experience into something that symbolically gave them what they needed - such as confidence, hope, and security.

In telling my story in my debut poetry collection, I hope to bring to the forefront not just event and outcome, but experience. My aim is, through metaphor and ink-blotted art, to help those who have not encountered comparable traumas to deepen their empathy. And for those who unfortunately have faced comparable traumas, I hope they might find solace in my journey, a voice with my words, and (part of) their healing in being heard.