Growing up in a collectivist, working-class Hispanic family in small-town Texas, I often felt like an outsider. As a family cyclebreaker, I struggled to balance loyalty to family, community, and tradition with the pressures of an individualistic society. For years, I adapted to an identity that felt safe but never quite felt like me.

My journey of self-discovery took me to Morocco as a Peace Corps volunteer, where I experienced another collectivist culture and deepened my understanding of how culture shapes our identities and sense of belonging. Later, navigating an intercultural marriage with my Jewish partner further illuminated how our family histories and cultural values shape the ways we relate, love, and build our lives.

I know firsthand the exhaustion of living by traditions that no longer feel like your own, and the loneliness that can come with wanting something different. When you're caught between honoring where you come from and becoming who you are, it can feel like there's no room for all of you. Over time, I learned to cultivate a sense of safety within myself, take up space without apology, and reclaim a voice I had spent years keeping quiet. Today, that journey informs how I show up for others as a therapist.

We often inherit stories about who we're supposed to be, what we owe our families, and what it means to live a good life. Shaped by our families, cultures, and larger systems, these narratives influence whose identities, needs, and ways of living are affirmed—and whose are not. Through my work in child welfare and as a therapist supporting families impacted by death row, I've witnessed how legal systems and institutional structures shape people's lives and perpetuate harm across families and communities. These experiences fuel my passion for liberatory therapy: work that moves beyond helping people cope with the world as it is to questioning the systems, narratives, and inherited patterns that limit what's possible.

I believe healing begins when we make space to question what we've inherited, reconnect with the parts of ourselves we've learned to silence, and decide what we want to carry forward. It's not about rejecting where we come from or figuring everything out on our own. It's about finding a way to honor our roots without losing ourselves in them—and creating space for new ways of being, relating, and belonging.