Hi! I'm Rachel
You can't make this stuff up.

Today, I’m a therapist, a group practice owner, and a clinical supervisor. I’m also a mom who’s about to launch her last kid into the void of college, only to be seen again on school breaks when she returns to wreck my kitchen.

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But that’s just the most recent chapter.

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Before this version of me showed up in the world of MFTs, I had a few other lives. I’ve been called a jack of all trades more than once, not always as a compliment, but it fits. I’ve always followed what lit me up. Sometimes that meant leaving something behind before it made sense to other people. Sometimes it meant building something new out of scraps and instinct.

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I was the sponge kid, the one who stayed up late with a flashlight under the covers, reading anything I could get my hands on. Straight A's, gifted and talented, always in a school play, always asking too many questions. I studied genetics in college and worked on the Human Genome Project. I got bored, made jewelry, and sold it in parking lots at Dead shows. Then, I took a hard left turn and got a graduate degree in education, because I wanted to talk about books instead of blood.

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I became a high school English teacher. I made jewelry on the side. Then, I became the person who trained the teachers and eventually opened a bead store where I hosted kids’ birthday parties and taught moms how to make necklaces while their toddlers chewed on the tables.

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And then: children. Mom-ing. More identity shifts. More reinventions. I went back to school again, this time for health coaching. I kept learning, because that’s what I do. I get curious, I get obsessed, and I make something out of it.

Eventually, finally, I came back to the thing I always wanted to do- become a therapist. I started grad school at 39, and it grounded me in something solid. Structural Family Therapy gave me a clear, steady lens, one that helped me understand people through the patterns they live in, the roles they play, the boundaries they’re given, or not. It made sense to me. It still does.

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But once I got out into the field, I was hit with the pressure to add more. To niche down. Specialize. EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, IFS, Brainspotting. It felt like the only way to be seen as skilled was to collect certifications. I tried some of them. I stayed rooted in my SFT training, but something still felt off. There was a gap I couldn’t name. Something was missing.

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Then I found neurodiversity.

That changed everything.

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It gave me language for what I had been sensing for years- that a lot of people experience the world differently, and most therapy models don’t leave room for that. I started to see how some of the tools we use can miss the mark, especially when they ignore sensory needs or assume behavior means the same thing for everyone. And I had to be honest with myself. Maybe I had caused harm too. Not on purpose. But it matters.

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I’m not here to act like I know it all. I don’t. But I do know what I’m doing now works better, for me and for the people I sit with. So I’m sharing it. If it helps another therapist feel less stuck, or opens up conversations we need to be having, then good. That’s what this is for.

That’s why I ruin therapy. Care to come along?