Mary has worked with clients from around the world and across the lifespan starting with children as young as five to adults with 60+ years of life. Her clients have included people of great privilege as well as people experiencing homelessness, and refugees/asylees who are forced to start over in the wake of trauma and persecution.

Mary takes a trauma informed, psychodynamic, relational approach to therapy. She draws inspiration from many modalities in treatment including dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), solution focused therapy (SFT), and narrative therapy. Mary has received formal training in animal assisted therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).

Mary is a person with lived experience of trauma and as such is an active and enthusiastic supporter of the Recovery and Peer Support movements in Philadelphia. Her first formal role in the field of mental health was working with Mental Health Partnerships (formerly Mental Health Association of SEPA) which is a pioneer both in the Recovery Movement and community based mental health more widely. The values espoused by these movements continue to inform her clinical perspective today.

Having grown up at the intersection of many different faith traditions, Mary has knowledge of many practices and beliefs - particularly the Abrahamic religions at varying levels of orthodoxy. She also has knowledge of the Western Esoteric traditions, Gnosticism, Hinduism, as well as some indigenous Peruvian practices and nature based practices such as Wicca. She is also comfortable and experienced supporting interfaith perspectives, category defying spiritual beliefs, and atheism. She has worked extensively with people of faith: both with people who find their faith supportive and affirming as well as those who have survived religious and spiritual abuse from their families and faith communities. Despite this experience Mary knows that no category fully encompasses the beliefs, and experiences of an individual. She has the humility to admit when she doesn’t know something, or understand something, and will take steps to learn.

Mary is supportive of everyone’s right to self determnism within their chosen framework and is LGBTQ+ affirming.