Giinagay! (hello or welcome).

I acknowledge I am living on unceded land of the Gumbaynggirr people, and my face to face practice clinic is in Baalijin (Bellingen). I am a dog lover + amateur whale/cetacean enthusiast. I have lived experience of chronic illness, grief and loss. I am third generation white anglo settler European. I began as a community development practitioner passionate about peace undertaking community work in rural Mexico. My curiosity has traversed the outer conflicts that result in violence, racism and hatred to the inner conflict of braced, frozen and terrified tissues of our own muscles and organs.

Healing is a collaborative practice that is “power with” not “power over”.

While I understand the value in medication and diagnosis, as a justice oriented social worker I am critical of the colonial paternalistic biomedical approach to mental illness which ‘over responsibilises’ and ‘pathologises’ (terms coined by Canadian social worker Catrina Brown) the profound psychological, emotional and physiological distress our inequitable system creates.

I am not an ‘expert’ but a collaborator in your healing.

I recognise that the colonial capitalist project is inherently violent and exploits people and ecological systems to generate mass wealth for a minority. I am committed to an individual and collective practice that is human rights oriented, heart centred, inclusive, accessible, curious, non pathologising and anti oppressive/anti racist.

Ngarrayngga (take care)

I acknowledge the  custodians of this place where I live and work, the Gumbaynggirr, Dunghutti, Birpai, and Nganyaywana Nations.  I pay my respects to Elders past and present.  

I commit to a living practice of anti racism and deepening knowledge of my own white body supremacy.  I commit to work in collaboration to address the ongoing harms of colonisation.