Birth/First & Adoptive Parent Counseling

Adoption is complex, and you deserve support from a professional who understands the experiences, relationships, and emotions that arise.

I bring a literal lifetime of experience to my work in adoption, as an international and transracial adoptee from India, an adoptive parent to a child from Ethiopia, and a psychologist who has worked in the adoption community since 2002. I understand adoption not simply as an event or decision, but as a lifelong experience that shapes individuals, families, relationships, and identity.

I work with first/birth parents and adoptive parents who are struggling with adoption. You may be processing a past relinquishment, preparing for adoption, adjusting to life as an adoptive family, navigating an open adoption or reunion, trying to figure out parenting, or simply finding that adoption has brought up emotions and triggers you did not expect. Therapy can provide space to explore your experiences with someone who understands that love, grief, joy, uncertainty, connection, and loss can exist alongside one another.

My intention is to create a space where you do not need to minimize your experiences, defend your choices, or fit your story into someone else's narrative of adoption. Instead, we can make room for the whole picture: what has been meaningful, what has been difficult, what you have learned, and what you may still be trying to understand.

Every person's experience with adoption is unique, but some common themes that can be explored in therapy include:

  • Grief, loss, guilt, shame, and complicated emotions
  • Relationships, communication, intimacy, and boundaries
  • Parenting challenges and parent-child relationships
  • Attachment, connection, and belonging
  • Anxiety, depression, stress, and emotional overwhelm
  • Identity, family roles, and shifting sense of self
  • Open adoption and relationships across adoptive and first/birth families
  • Contact, communication, and evolving relationships over time
  • Adoption-related trauma and difficult or confusing experiences
  • Racial, cultural, and family identity
  • Expectations, uncertainty, and the pressure to “get it right”
  • Perfectionism, over-analyzing, and self-doubt
  • Life transitions and changes within the adoption journey
  • Authenticity, self-trust, and making space for complexity

My work is framed by The Seven Core Issues in Adoption (loss/abandonment, rejection, grief, guilt/shame, identity, intimacy, and control) and decades of experience working alongside adoptees, first parents, adoptive parents, and the broader adoption community. Through the lens of Liberation Psychology, we can also explore how larger systems, social expectations, power, race, culture, and societal narratives about adoption influence your experiences and relationships.

Together, we can make space for emotions that may feel contradictory or difficult to express, while building self-compassion, strengthening boundaries, processing grief and trauma, and developing greater clarity about what you need and what you want your relationships to look like moving forward.

With some clients, I also incorporate EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and Brainspotting into our talk therapy work. These specialized trauma therapies can be helpful when difficult experiences continue to affect you in the present.

I offer telehealth sessions for clients in participating PSYPACT states and Outdoor Therapy sessions in the Denver area for clients seeking in-person services. Learn more about service rates on my Fees and Insurance page.

If my approach sounds like it may be a good fit for you, please submit a Request for Individual Counseling. When your availability aligns with an opening in my schedule, I’ll email you intake paperwork and we’ll schedule a complimentary 25-minute initial telehealth consultation. This gives us an opportunity to discuss what you’d like to explore in therapy and consider how our work together could best support you.

Unsure about ongoing counseling services? Do you think that a one-time or occasional consultation offering adoptee insights, parent education, and adoption resources would be a better fit for your needs? Schedule at Personalized Action Plan Consultation, a 45-minute session where we'll work together to develop a customized list of resources and ideas designed to support the next steps in your adoptive child’s journey.