I’m the oldest child in my family and was raised in an entrepreneurial family. When I was 15, my passion for understanding human behavior and healthy relationships began. Originally I pursued writing at SCAD, until I transferred to John Jay College of Criminal Justice and got my Bachelors in Forensic Psychology.

While at John Jay, I got to experience amazing professors, join the Peer Counseling program, intern at the Center For Family Justice as a Victim Advocate, and pursue research in my areas of interest.

While finishing my Bachelors, I met Jak, my husband. Little did I realize he was hiding a porn addiction. With my psychology background, I had the knowledge and skills to help us turn our relationship around.

Through the years of hit and misses, we figured out over 100 relationship and recovery opportunities that can have any relationship thrive after the worst of times!

I discovered that there were not any therapists that were familiar with or believed in porn addiction. I did, however, find many online communities in my journey. Some communities were helpful, and other’s were not. One online community had many toxic elements that detracted from our recovery. Sadly we stayed there way too long before moving on.

On our own, I decided to take all my knowledge of addiction and trauma from school and applied it to Jak and myself. We started with recovery books and I luckily had an amazing trauma therapist for myself that was open to learning about porn addiction and betrayal trauma. However, Jak was not as fortunate.

Jak found therapists, but they didn’t know about porn addiction, they thought “female friendly porn” would be fine, they blamed me (you know the “guys will by guys” attitude), and one even sat back for 3 months until one day the therapist said, “I don’t know why you’re seeing me, you don’t have a problem.” Talk about bad therapy, professional trauma, and invalidation! Our experiences with professionals were abysmal.

I also knew many others were having the exact same experiences as Jak and I. With my own experience with addiction as well as betrayal trauma, my husband’s addiction, my natural ability to help others, and my education, I decided that I had to do something about this.

I had to stop the cycle of people getting traumatized by professionals that didn’t know a thing about betrayal trauma, sex addiction or intimacy anorexia. So I created my company and had a recovery friend, Chloe, join me in my venture.

She and her husband, Cliff, had 2 years of recovery on us, and we in the small percentage in the online community I knew to have both individually as well as relationally recovered from sexual addiction and betrayal trauma where there were no slips or relapses, simply recovery.

In our time in the various online communities, we watched so many addicts fail, lie, and abuse betrayed partners on the sites. We watched the betrayed partners tear each other down and hide in private groups and chats talking about fantasies about cheating on their husbands. We were prominent members in the communities, doing our best to help others over those years, and we learned a lot. We learned the biggest pitfalls, the most common mistakes, and we did the opposite of what everyone else was doing.

I now help clients enter marriage confidently as well as help married couples struggling from sexual addiction, intimacy anorexia, and betrayal trauma overcome the challenge and build out a successful recovery lifestyle.

Jak and I celebrated his 7 years of sobriety as well as 8 years of being together June 2023! We celebrated the progress we have made as individuals, parents, and a couple.

 

I am now lucky enough to help other couples achieve what we have achieved! I spend my days teaching the most up to date certification in sexual addiction, holding supervision, pursuing education, while also working my way through my AASAT’s in sexual addiction, partner recovery, and intimacy anorexia when I am not seeing clients and spending time with family.

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