My Story

Over time I came to understand something important: many people in 12-Step recovery do profound spiritual work but still carry trauma the steps were never designed to treat.
Because of my own history and healing, I can meet those clients with deep insight and compassion — not as my sole focus, but as part of the broader tapestry of people I support.

Talk therapy helped me survive and make sense of things, but it never touched the trauma beneath the surface.

Meanwhile, life kept inviting me forward.
I’ve been married for almost 35 years, and together we raised five children who are now extraordinary adults. I’ve taught childbirth classes, led parenting groups, worked as a birth doula and a hospice social worker, and supported families through beginnings, endings, and everything in between. These experiences gave me a deep understanding of the human condition — the beauty, the complexity, the sacredness.

My story begins with trauma.

My father was diagnosed with cancer when I was five weeks old and died when I was six months old. From the beginning, I grew up in a world shaped by grief, attachment wounds, and resilience.

My teen years were hard — bullying, dieting, and a painful struggle with bulimia. Well-meaning adults told me “don’t be so sensitive,” and I learned early that if I looked good on the outside, maybe no one would notice the chaos on the inside.

At nineteen, desperate for help, I walked into my first 12-Step meeting and ran out when they talked about God. But I came back — because I learned it was a spiritual program, not a religious one, and that recovery began with willingness, not perfection. I started with a tiny openness to something greater than myself… and that willingness grew.

Eventually, that search led me back to my own backyard — to Torah. When I plugged into Judaism, something inside me lit up. It felt like a socket finally meeting its plug.

And then, when my youngest children left the nest, everything I had tightly held together came undone.
I fell into orthorexia, restriction, and eventually anorexia, and developed osteoporosis. When I had to gain weight to save my bones, years of trauma burst to the surface. There was no suppressing it anymore.

Nothing helped… until I found Brainspotting.
And that changed everything.

Brainspotting didn’t just help me understand my trauma — it helped me release it from my brain and body.
It brought me back to myself — to presence, compassion, faith, embodiment, my marriage, and the work I was meant to do.

I’ve spent my whole life trying to RSVP to life with the tools I had.
And now, with everything I’ve lived, learned, and healed — from recovery to motherhood to grief work to Brainspotting and IFS — I’ve developed my Kadima Therapy & Coaching approach, which weaves together all of these strands along with my signature RSVvP Method.

As the Gamara teaches:

My path wasn’t always graceful — but it was mine.
And every part of it now serves me in supporting others with honesty, strength, and compassion.