I am an award winning nurse practitioner for both adults and children, with advanced training from Syracuse University, Emory University, and Brandman University. For more than 25 years, I’ve had the honor of caring for women and families in gynecology, obstetrics, neonatal care, and psychiatry. I’m also the creator of Nurse Practitioners on Wheels™, the first tiny house mental health clinic on wheels, designed to bring compassionate care directly into the heart of the community.

My path to becoming a holistic psychiatric nurse practitioner began with a simple but powerful belief: mental health cannot be separated from the rest of the body.

Over the years, I repeatedly saw patients whose symptoms were treated in isolation, anxiety addressed without considering hormones, depression managed without exploring inflammation or lifestyle, and medications prescribed without acknowledging the deeper patterns affecting a person’s wellbeing. I did what I was trained to do: diagnose and prescribe. And for some, it worked beautifully.

But for many others, something was missing.

The 15-minute medication checks. The side effects that created new problems. The women who wanted to be asked about their lives, their food, their stress, their cycles - not just their symptom checklist. The women who whispered, "Is there something more natural I could try?"
I heard that question so many times that it became my calling.

The Herbal Path

I went back to the plants. I studied botanical medicine, completed advanced training in nurse herbalism and integrative psychiatry and earned my advance practice holistic nursing board certification. I learned what traditional healers have known for millennia: that the earth provides medicine, and that the kitchen has always been the first apothecary.

But I also learned something else - something that shapes the very core of this practice:

The most integrative thing I could do was not abandon one world for the other. It was to master both.

Why I Kept the Prescription Pad

Some holistic practitioners walk away from conventional medicine entirely. I respect that path but it's not mine.

I kept my prescriptive authority because I never want a woman to be caught between two worlds with no one to guide her across. I've watched patients fall through the cracks: the woman whose herbalist couldn't help when her depression became severe. The woman whose psychiatrist dismissed her desire to try herbs. The woman who tapered her medication on her own because no one would help her do it safely.

I built this practice so that woman never has to choose or be abandoned.

I lead with plants. I lead with food. I lead with presence and creativity and the deep belief that your body knows how to heal.

And when the moment calls for pharmaceutical support temporarily, as a bridge, as a complement, or as a foundation, I'm right here. Same provider. Same trust. Same relationship. No referral needed.

The Kitchen Path

Somewhere along the way, I also remembered that the most healing moments of my own life happened around a kitchen table. Cooking with my mother. Feeding someone I loved. Being fed when I couldn't feed myself.

I trained in culinary medicine and culinary art therapy because I witnessed what happens when women gather in a kitchen with intention: walls come down, stories come out, hands stay busy while hearts crack open, and healing happens in the most ordinary, extraordinary way over a shared meal.

A Different Kind of Mental Health Practice

The Integrative Mental Wellness & Releaf Clinic, is the practice I wish existed when I was searching for a better way to serve women. It's built on three pillars:

1. Integrated psychiatric care that leads with herbal medicine and carries the full authority to prescribe conventional medication when needed
2. Culinary medicine that reconnects women with food as a source of mental health and vitality
3. Culinary art therapy that uses the kitchen as a sacred space for emotional healing and community

If you’re looking for a compassionate, integrative approach to mental health care, I'd be honored to walk this path with you wherever it leads.