About Me
My Clinical Philosophy
I decided to become a speech therapist after doing some observation of speech therapy sessions with autistic kids. I sensed some similarity between them and me in a way I couldn’t describe at the time. I also sensed that they wanted the same thing I wanted my entire life but often felt out of reach: meaningful bonds with others.
That underlying intrinsic motivation to authentically connect with others is what drove me to become an SLP, and it is what continues to drive me to this day, nearly a decade into my career.
I opened up my clinic in Medford, MA as physical space where autistic people could access calm and joy, even if just for a session or two each week. My therapeutic practice first and foremost stems from a lens of compassion and curiosity. Autistic people, like all people, do well when it is within their capacity. I provide holistic person-centered speech, language, and feeding care, starting with building a foundation of safety, connection, and fun. Clients, caregivers, and I work together to determine and facilitate progress towards meaningful speech, language, feeding, social-pragmatic, or socioemotional goals.
I learn and will always keep learning from my autistic clients, their caretakers, and team members. While I utilize knowledge from my professional experience and aspects of my lived experience as an autistic person, you all are the true teachers.
My Story
I graduated with my SLP degree in 2016 at University of Wisconsin-Madison—way before I or most SLPs knew what “neurodiversity” even was. Upon moving to upstate NY and working in as an itinerant SLP, it was jarring to suddenly be faced with a clash between what felt “right” and common clinical methods that irked me. Goals like appearing to play the “normal” way, following my instructions despite being clearly dysregulated, and submitting to superficial social expectations never seemed to actually help my clients, even if achieved, and the path to get there felt stressful for everyone. Strategies like grabbing clients by the hands without their consent, withholding toys or affection until they complied, and heavily structured formulaic approaches to language building all felt wrong.
I had to unlearn a lot and learn a lot at a time before there was education on more compassionate ways. Guided by my own set of values and intuitive sense of clinical reasoning for why autistic people do the things they do, I slowly figured out kind ways to engage in speech, language, and feeding therapy.
And then I started to suspect I was autistic.
I was diagnosed in February of 2020 and hit the ground running. I connected with several other recently diagnosed autistic speech-language pathologists, friends and colleagues Hillary Crow, MS, CCC-SLP and Caroline Gaddy, MS, CCC-SLP. We published an article in the Sept 2020 ASHA Leader “Putting Autistic Voices at the Forefront of Care” calling for the necessity of speech-language care for autistic clients informed by the Autistic community and “outed” ourselves as autistic SLPs when the concept was nearly unheard of. The last few years I’ve maintained a half-time client caseload while doing a combination of professional speaking events and continuing education creation on the topics of neurodiversity-affirming practice in general, gestalt language processing, and communication of inner state.
What brings me the most joy, however, is learning from my autistic clients and their caregivers and team members. I opened up my physical clinic space in September 2020 to do what makes me the happiest, professionally, which is seeing clients full-time. When I am not working, I enjoy doing art and illustration, watching anime, playing video games, going to art museums, going to the Boston Ballet, and spending time with my husband and kitty-cat.