About Jann

My Approach

My approach to therapy begins with relationship. Genuine connection matters. Therapy can offer a safe place to try new ways of relating, and there is no one-size-fits-all way to do that. Our work should fit your unique needs, goals, and personality; if something isn't working, we adjust together.

You know your own story best. My role is to be both guide and companion on your journey, sometimes offering a gentle push, sometimes sharing a laugh, always with deep respect for who you are, where you've been, and where you're heading.

Sometimes I may even tell you a story about one of my own mistakes. Somebody should learn from them.

First sessions can feel a little strange. You're meeting someone new and beginning a brand-new relationship without knowing quite where it will lead. I'll let you in on a secret: even after years of doing this, I still feel a little nervous in first sessions too.

We'll find our way together.

Experience and Background

I work with children, adolescents, adults, and families. My work is relational and trauma-informed, with particular experience in autism and ADHD, complex trauma, depression, anxiety, family systems, foster care and CPS involvement, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and clients with complex or higher-acuity needs.

I am comfortable with long-haul work that does not fit neatly into a brief-treatment model, and I value therapy that is individualized, collaborative, and grounded in the relationship.

I also provide clinical supervision and welcome professional connections for referrals, consultation, and shared resources. The S in LPC-S stands for Supervisor: I supervise LPC Associates working toward full licensure.

My Story

I have always been more interested in the person than the box they are supposed to fit into.

I was interested in psychology early, and I think I always knew I wanted my work to mean something, to make a difference in people's lives, even before I knew exactly what shape that would take. I earned a teaching degree as part of a larger plan, not because teaching itself was ever the destination. The larger plan was still taking shape, life intervened, and teaching became the practical path available to me.

I spent nine years in the classroom. I loved the kids and genuinely enjoyed many of the things I taught, but teaching itself always felt like a really nice shoe that simply didn't fit. What did fit were the relationships. I repeatedly found myself more interested in what was happening in my students' lives than in getting through the next lesson, especially with the kids who were struggling the most. Trauma, loss, family conflict, instability, and all the complicated realities of being human don't disappear because someone walks into a classroom. Eventually, I had to recognize that the conversations I kept being drawn toward weren't getting in the way of the work. They were the work I wanted to do.

Getting from there to becoming a therapist was neither simple nor straight. Life interrupted that path more than once, sometimes profoundly, and I had to find my footing and reinvent myself along the way. That experience shaped how I understand people. Human lives are not tidy. A person can be extraordinarily capable and still struggle. They can be resilient and overwhelmed at the same time. They can lose their footing without losing who they are.

Over more than two decades as a therapist, I have worked with children, adolescents, adults, and families with very different histories, strengths, needs, challenges, and ways of experiencing the world. Again and again, that work has reinforced something I believe deeply: there is no one-size-fits-all way to be a person, and there cannot be a one-size-fits-all way to do therapy. Good therapy begins with the individual in front of us, with curiosity about who they are and what has shaped them, rather than assumptions about who they should be or what ought to work for them.

My work in animal rescue has reinforced that philosophy in ways that may not be immediately obvious. It has taught me many of the same lessons: look beyond what is immediately visible, understand behavior in context, recognize the uniqueness of the individual, and never underestimate the power of relationships and environment. Individual change and systemic change are not competing ideas. We need both. People cannot be understood outside the context of their lives. Sometimes meaningful change means helping an individual grow; sometimes it means recognizing that something in the environment or system around them needs to change. Often, it means both.

At the heart of my work is relationship. People should be able to come as they are. I bring training, experience, curiosity, and perspective to the room, but you are the expert on your own life. My job is not to hand someone a formula for who they should become. It is to walk alongside them as they understand their own story differently, recognize strengths and possibilities they may have lost sight of, and build a life that fits who they actually are.

Ultimately, the mission of this practice is larger than providing therapy. It grows out of that same desire that was there long before I knew exactly what form my work would take: to make a meaningful difference. One individual, one relationship, and sometimes one system at a time. To recognize the uniqueness and value of individual lives, while helping create the relationships, environments, and systems in which people have the opportunity to thrive.