As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I am committed to helping you create better relationships and a more satisfying life. From eating disorders and addictions, to marital problems and issues of special concern to women and mothers, I can help you and your loved ones heal what needs healing. It is my personal mission to help you live a life that is flourishing and joyful.

Though I can help people improve all parts of their lives, I specialize in “food recovery,” helping those of us who eat to handle stress instead of developing healthy, self-affirming ways of living. The question most often asked by anyone seeking a Food Recovery Expert is ”what qualifies you to do this work?” For me, the answer is both personal and professional.

In my own life, I struggled with the serious eating disorder of anorexia, beginning at age 11. This experience unwittingly rendered me an expert on the isolation, self-hatred and self-torment which characterizes the inner world of an anorexic, and of many others who turn to food, drugs and other self-harming behaviors to manage life.

I also witnessed first-hand the pain and frustration my parents and brothers experienced in attempting to help me and to cope themselves. Unfortunately, my denial was stronger than their best efforts to help me.

I was one of the lucky anorexics who survived. At the age of 30, weighing 68 pounds, I finally entered therapy for “anxiety and depression.” Even then I didn’t believe that I had an eating problem. Fortunately, my therapist did. I am immeasurably grateful for the help I received from a number of therapists and other health care professionals.

It was my own journey towards recovery that compelled me to become a psychotherapist and to work with individuals and families affected by food and eating issues.

My professional background in eating disorders began with coursework in graduate school. The subject of my thesis was the causes and treatment of eating disorders. Since 1982, I have worked as a California Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Eating Disorder Specialist in private practice. In this time, I have worked extensively with female and male adolescents and adults suffering from anorexia, bulimia and binge eating, as well as with families or with individual family members where there is a family member with an eating disorder.

My post-graduate studies in eating disorders have included coursework at the Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto, John F. Kennedy University and the San Francisco Psychotherapy Institute, as well as various seminars with eating disorder specialists Susan Sands, Ph.D., David Garner, Ph.D, Joel Yaeger, Ph.D. and many others.

I am affiliated with the state organization and the Marin Chapter of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT), the San-Francisco based Association for Professionals Treating Eating Disorders (APTED), the Network of Indepenent Interventionists (NII), the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), the International Eating Disorder Association of Professionals, (IEDAP) and the the Eating Disorder Referral and Information Network (EDRIC). My publications include the book Dying to Please: Anorexia, Treatment and Recovery (Second Edition) and the chapter “Back Through the Looking Glass” in the book Full Lives: Stories by Women Who Have Freed Themselves from Food and Weight Obsession.