We are uninvited settlers occupying the stolen, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), Qayqayt, and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) peoples. Our relationship with these lands dictates our commitment to understanding the ongoing impacts of colonization and decolonizing our practices in and out of the counselling room.
Hey, welcome! Question for you: what's causing you to deal with everything life throws at you alone? Maybe you're trying to break free from hurtful relational contexts, self-questioning, and other distressing emotions like loneliness. Many folx I work with have also experienced histories of trauma (not just trauma with a capital T) and have had to navigate invalidating environments. In working together, we can co-create sustainable systems of self-exploration and relational engagement so that you can connect to rootedness in joy and groundedness in purpose.
A little about me: I'm a cis, queer-with-straight-partner-privilege, (mostly) able-bodied, working-turned-middle class, half-gen, racialized settler from Hong Kong. I found my way to this work through exploring and navigating my own relational trauma through the lens of privilege and systemic oppression.
For the last decade, I've had the privilege of working with folx resisting multiple systems of oppression, which often manifests as being impacted by the criminal punishment system, addictions, and relational trauma. Through our work we've dissected the paradoxes of life, cultivating growth and healing by exploring the stories we subscribe to and the stories we tell. My approach centers on co-creating spaces of change by cultivating a culture of compassionate curiosity and discernment; often with a dose of humor and creativity (and lots of questions!). We look at your experience through an intersectional, systemic, and political context, often incorporating things like EMDR, Art, and Somatic work to further contextualize your exploration, compassion, and growth.
While I am continually engaging in direct clinical work with clients within a counselling context, I am currently specializing in providing clinical supervision + business consulting services from a justice-grounded perspective. Many practitioners are not supported in accessing business development education, let alone one that is in alignment with our ethics, our knowing, and the world we are trying to create. If you relate to this, my role is to support you in developing a sustainable practice without having to sacrifice the ethics you hold dear.
In addition to my work here at Venturous, I am a board member of Healing in Colour; teach and supervise counsellors-in-training at Adler University and Vancouver Community College; and founded Reflecting on Justice, a mutual aid/wealth redistribution-based virtual platform for therapists to unlearn systemic oppression within ourselves and our profession, through community with other therapists. To ensure continual alignment with ethical practice, I engage in ongoing clinical supervision with Vikki Reynolds.
Outside of work I have a passion for creating + learning, video games, comedy + live music. I'm also currently writing a book that critiques the Eurocentric ideology of familial love within a therapeutic context as grounded in my father’s experience as a refugee and explored through an intergenerational lens.
Additional Training:
In the Media: