After receiving my Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College, I pursued my acupuncture degree at the Maryland University of Integrated Health and received a Master of Acupuncture in 2000. Since that time I have held a Maine state acupuncture license as well as a diplomate of acupuncture from the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. I have furthered my post-graduate studies focusing on women’s wellness, trauma and nutrition to name a few. Additionally, I was a founding member and volunteer at the Portland Veterans’ Acupuncture Clinic.

My Path

I first experienced acupuncture as a patient when I was in my early twenties. I had recently returned to Maine after studying and traveling extensively in Southeast Asia and Australia. I was experiencing physical symptoms while also feeling at a loss of where to go and what to do with my life. At the urging of a friend, I decided to give acupuncture a try. After a few months of receiving treatments, I noticed a significant easing of my symptoms and also felt like deeper shifts were happening. It was hard for me to articulate my experience, and the image which came to me at the time was that if I were a stream, it felt like someone had come along and cleared out the debris and dead leaves that were impeding the flow of water through the stream bed. Four years later when I began to study acupuncture I learned that this was, metaphorically speaking, exactly what an acupuncturist does. 

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I began studying plant spirit medicine with Eliot Cowan in 2012 at the Blue Deer Center in Margaretville, New York. My training included an eight-week class as well as a six month supervised clinical apprenticeship, and I became inducted as a plant spirit medicine healer in 2015. I continue to train with my teachers, expand my material medica and deepen my relationship with the wise and generous plants of New England.

I first learned about plant spirit medicine when I was in school to become an acupuncturist. I read Eliot Cowan’s book Plant Spirit Medicine, and it resonated strongly with me. The book is about his journey as a healer as well as about the specifics of this contemporary incarnation of plant medicine. Like so many others who read the book, I was curious and eager to receive the medicine which I did through a fellow acupuncture student who had studied with Eliot. My experience on the table while I was receiving my first treatment was profound, immediate and difficult to articulate. As soon as I received the medicine and was resting on the massage table I found myself in a heightened state of awareness that left me extremely grounded in my body and with an acute sense of oneness with my surroundings. Everything around me popped with a clarity and vibrancy in a way that I never before experienced. This feeling lasted for many hours, and over time as I continued to receive regular treatments, there grew inside of me a sense of peace that I have since learned comes from being deeply seen and supported by the plants. From that time on, I knew that I wanted to study the medicine and share its gifts with others. 

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