Therapist Profile

My Approach to Helping

As a clinical mental health counselor in Pittsburgh, PA, I work with clients on mood disorders, relationship issues, alcoholism recovery, and life-cycle adjustments. I specialize in grief and loss counseling for all ages and circumstances, counseling for the older adult, end-of-life counseling, help for the caretaker, and living with cancer and other serious or chronic illnesses. Related interests include: the healing power of music and song, the use of writing in therapy, and present-moment strategies for better mental health.

I now provide online fee-based counseling; also free public chats three to four times each month. And a free "Ask the Therapist" feature on my website.

I offer a number of support groups and workshops on topics of loss and grief and I am available for on-site "grief in the workplace" counseling services. In addition, I often work with clients in their homes, in assisted-living facilities, hospitals, hospices, and nursing homes.

I provide couples counseling and work with families as the need arises. I welcome clients of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds and welcome LGBT clients.

More Info About My Practice

I came to counseling as a mid-life career change. In the mid 1980's, I completed a doctoral degree in history at Carnegie-Mellon University. It was as a result of that work that I realized how deeply my life had been affected by loss and grief from an early age. The outcome of my doctoral work was publication of a book by Syracuse University Press (1996), Mother Donit Fore the Best:" Letters of a 19th-Century Orphan Asylum. Starting in 2004, I pursued the education, training, and credentials necessary for professional mental health counseling. I now specialize in grief and loss and also mental health issues confronting the elderly, the chronically and terminally ill, their families, friends, and caretakers. My interests extend also to counseling women diagnosed with breast cancer, couples experiencing a late-term pregnancy loss, and adults who have experienced the loss of a parent as a child. My philosophy and approach is very basic and comes from Viktor Frankl, that life has meaning even up to our last breath. Working with loss and grief is about meaning making. So too with the elderly and terminally ill. There is no time limit on emotional well-being.