HI, I’M MARIEL.

I work with BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, Neurodivergent, and/or Disabled teens and adults who want to understand and connect with themselves as a means of creating lives they want to live. Bring your “strong sense of justice,” your “too-much-ness” and let’s craft a life that works for you. I am especially enthusiastic about working with students, creatives, activists, nonprofit/public sector, and adjacent workers experiencing burnout. 

I think that our inner worlds are an often untapped or even villainized resource for cultivating the relationships and communities we want. I am rooted in Black Feminist, relational, and humanistic values. This includes a belief that everything is connected: symptoms such as anxiety and depression are often related to relationship and resource issues, which connect to things like identity, neurotype, or environment. Oppression is a mental health issue and I find therapeutic value in acknowledging all of the barriers a client is up against, while centering even the smallest sources of agency and freedom that we can work with. 

I came to this work because I saw other multiply-marginalized members of my communities struggling to find therapists who shared their identities or at least had an understanding and interest in their experiences. All of the ways I’m marginalized (race, sex, gender, orientation, disability) have required me to embrace a multidimensional view of human experiences. I take great joy in being able to flow with clients through waves of emotion, seasons of exploration, “low spoon days,” and so many other life transitions.

I offer affirming and anti-oppressive space for you to explore who you are, what you’ve been through, how those experiences have shaped you, and how you’d like to shape your future. You may notice the many ways my own neurodivergence shows up and how I accommodate myself: time blindness and timers; difficulties with recall and having note-taking aids; “stimming” to focus with many fidget tools and “emotional support water bottles.” I will work hard to deconstruct my own internalized oppression and welcome critique of even the concept of therapy itself. 

I earned a Master of Social Work in response to the “training” I received during my years working in a campus LGBTQ center, as a professional creative, and in nonprofits supporting marginalized youth. I have training and experience using techniques from Solution-Focused Therapy (to identify and reach tangible goals), Motivational Interviewing (to help you get clarity), Emotion-Focused Therapy (for emotional awareness, expression, or regulation), and Internal Family Systems (for cultivating healthy self-compassion). I am currently training in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (for managing intense emotions and complex trauma), Exposure and Response Prevention (to address obsessive-compulsive symptoms), and Somatic Experiencing (for recovering from stress, shock, and trauma through the body).

My hobbies and special interests include home improvement, accessible design, creative art, Afro-Futurism, Steven Universe, and cats. I spend low-energy leisure time drawing floorplans, listening to podcasts like The Read or Levar Burton Reads, and taking naps with my cats. When there’s energy to spare, I enjoy long conversations with friends (or people-watching) at coffee shops, bars, public gardens, and galleries.