About me

Writer. Researcher. Artist.

I am a writer, researcher, artist and practitioner of mental health. For decades I have sought meaning and change through story, metaphor and the multiple channels of knowing that our bodies and the environment hold for us. Read more about the life experience and training I bring to this work.

My life & heritages

I was born in Calgary to mixed parentage (my father was Black/of African descent, my mother is East Indian), raised from infancy in Trinidad and returned to Toronto as a young adult in the 1990s.

I grew up in a Caribbean Catholic community; I knew little of the Hindu and Presbyterian roots on my mother’s side.

I have worked, lived and loved in Black, racialized, queer, trans, disabled communities for many years, gravitating towards artists, writers, poetry, spoken word and film production. My emphasis on experiential process, or felt sense, as a way of knowing, and as a path to recovery, stems from this.

I have learned about illness, advocacy and tremendous loss. I have also learned many kinds and qualities of love, companionship, intimacy and collective struggle.

For over 7 years, I received personalized 1:1 instruction from a certified yoga therapist who was taught by T.K.V. Desikachar. I continue to attend trainings in nada yoga, pratyahara, and pranayama from certified teachers in various lineages.

Throughout my life I have worked hard to find my own spiritual voice, bridging, reconciling and enriching the various teachings gifted to me by my heritages with the many nuances and layers of who I am.

My Qualifications

I am a Registered Psychotherapist with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario; a Clinical Member of the Ontario Society for Registered Psychotherapists; and a Canadian Certified Counsellor with the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association.

I earned a Master of Education degree and a Doctor of Education degree in Counselling Psychology from the University of Toronto. My coursework, clinical practica/ internships trained me in relational (RCT, interpersonal, intersubjective), and process-experiential emotion-focused approaches to psychotherapy; complex trauma; and the theory and practice of clinical supervision.

My doctoral dissertation focused on impact of clinical supervisory and other developmentally significant relationships on supervisee ‘voice’ and subjectivity. I have subsequently written and published on these concepts with a particular emphasis on how colonial repetitions of power and relational positioning affect racialized supervisees presently.

Additional Education & Research

  • I earned a Master of Education (MEd) and a Doctor of Education (EdD) degree at the University of Toronto. This immersed me in coursework and clinical practice of relational, narrative and process-experiential emotion-focused therapies, with a specific focus on complex trauma.

  • I began practicing clinical supervision through post-Master’s coursework and a doctoral practicum at U of T. I continue to supervise licensed and pre-licensed psychotherapists and clinical social workers.

    My doctoral dissertation focused on impact of clinical supervisory and other developmentally significant relationships on supervisee ‘voice’, subjectivity. I have subsequently written and published on these concepts with a particular emphasis on how colonial repetitions of power and relational positioning affect racialized supervisees presently.

  • I trained with the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute in interventions for trauma (Level I) and for advanced understandings of complex trauma and structural dissociation (Advanced - with Janina Fisher)

  • I completed a full certificate course in Narrative Therapy, as well as in Narrative Therapy for Trauma, with the Narrative Therapy Centre of Toronto.