Why I started The Spiritual MFT

So many people have asked me, “what’s with the name and logo?” and “why a faith-based therapy practice?”

I’ve heard it all, ranging from “aren’t you afraid of alienating your potential client demographics?” “Are you sure this is a wise business decision?” “what are you doing uprooting your life and going in a different direction?” to the flat out commentary from the peanut gallery of “This sounds like a terrible idea.”

Fair questions! (maybe not so fair remarks lol)

To better answer the how and why I got here, we have to go back to where it all started. It was the week after Easter in 2023. To my friends and family, I call it my “spiritual awakening” moment, where I threw in the towel and gave everything to God.

To understand why this was a “spiritual awakening” you have to understand the context of this moment in my life. At this time, I had seemingly everything you could ever imagine. Certainly, more than I ever deserved. I can recall so many prayers asking God why he was blessing me with so much and feeling so unworthy for where I was professionally in comparison to my peers.

I had recently accepted a full-time position and promotion at a concierge integrative practice in the best neighborhood in Philadelphia, running their integrative psychotherapy department after working there for years while I completed my graduate studies.

I was able to use my former nursing skills from my military service and combine them in a holistic health setting. I was at the forefront of mental healthcare integrating neurotherapies like Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Neuro-Biofeedback, and Quantitative Electrocephalogram tests on a team that combined all things mind and body healthcare with both eastern and western medicine.

I absolutely adored my clients and so many of my coworkers. I had a beautifully decorated private office on the 17th floor of a high-rise building overlooking Center City, Philadelphia. I loved getting dressed up for work every day and riding my little electric scooter 1 mile into the office, ready to help people with every resource possible.

Separate to this, I was engaged to my now husband, and (with minimal work/life balance) planning my fast approaching and over the top wedding later that year. I had been looking forward to the wedding of my dreams since I was a little girl. So much that I even had a binder in elementary school where I cut out ideas from magazines and printed locations, dresses, and even did a price comparison for the varying styles I was interested in. (Yes, getting married in Magic Kingdom was at the top of my list back in 2002).

When you grow up with your own dysfunctional family, dreaming of a healthy, loving, and intact family is a common experience, and one that I looked forward to for my entire life that was soon to be my reality.

My husband prefers his privacy (fair), so to put it simply. He is the best and is everything and more that I could have ever dreamed of or prayed for. God truly blessed me when He brought him into my life.

So here I am, I have the soon to be husband, the career, the wedding, and in general the life I always dreamed for myself. God had answered so many of my childhood and adolescent prayers…….. and yet, somehow, apart from my relationship to my now husband, it all felt empty. I kept thinking to myself, “this can’t be it.” I was quite literally “living my best life” having reached the pinnacle of success in all the areas that I had spent years working towards, and it was a giant, whopping, nothingburger.

So back to my “spiritual awakening” in April of 2023, the practice I worked for had sent me all over the country to attend training seminars and conferences to learn a specific, somatic, mind-body therapy technique. I was in Florida staying on location at a spa and resort hotel located on the water and just feeling overwhelmed with gratitude and confusion over what God was doing in my life.

I went to the training alone, so I had a lot of time to reflect and talk to God in prayer about what He was doing in my life. I would walk up and down the beach before and after the long days of power points and trainings just pouring my heart out to the Lord and trying to make sense of why I worked so hard up until this point to get “everything I’ve ever wanted” only for it to feel so empty. I lacked peace and true fulfillment despite it being “the best life” on paper.

I went through and processed every emotion possible. At the end of it all, I finally said “Okay God, I surrender my life to you. Do with it whatever you will, because obviously my plan isn’t working.” I remember thinking to myself, if I’m going to work this hard and feel this empty in what I’m doing in life, it might as well be in service to the Lord. It was both giving up on what I thought I wanted for myself and what I thought God wanted for me and surrendering entirely to His will.

Over the course of the next week at this conference, God spoke to me both directly and through so many people at this event. I’ve never had such a direct and consistent intervention from the Lord filled with every communication and confirmation you could imagine. The notes app on my iPhone was FILLED with everything the Lord was downloading in me.

At the end of it all, He revealed to me what He wanted me to do. First, it was to bring Christ into my therapy work, second, it was to research and integrate psychology, scripture, and prayer to heal His people’s mind, body, and souls, and sharing these findings on social media, and third, it was to start my own therapy practice to do it all.

I remember feeling completely overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit’s presence on my heart, and in utter disbelief over how I would make this happen, or why I would be called to do this. Nothing about the timing of this made sense. Since then, after studying all things psychology and theology, I’ve come to find out that God does in fact have a sense of humor in choosing the most unlikely or unworthy candidates to see His plans through, and that His perfect timing is rarely our own.

I remember living in a state of utter disbelief and joy, and while I had no idea how I was going to make this work and that my poor soon to be husband was going to lose his very grounded, stable, and logical mind over the plans I was about to put into action to completely uproot the stability of our lives, I knew I was trusting in the Lord and acting in obedience in wherever He was leading me. The emotion “frightfully overjoyed” describes this experience perfectly.

So, by the end of this week, I felt God’s presence within and all around me. I felt excited and motivated for what was to come, and eager to begin the good works He had started in me. While I’m obviously an emotionally oriented person, I’m also very intentional in my plans and decision-making process. I immediately began the strategic work on getting this calling in motion. Starting first with what it should be called.

Growing up in a dysfunctional family of my own, and one that misused Christ’s teachings and was a poor representation of what Christianity was meant to be, I was sensitive to those who had suffered from what I like to call, “Crappy Christians,” to more extreme forms of religious trauma. I felt like God was calling me to be a normal, logical, and level-headed bridge to those who had fallen away from His Church or for those who had never met Him for their various reasons.

In praying on this, I was reminded of the Holy Spirit, and how anyone today involved in New Age or Occultic practices are really just ripping off what God, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, offers to all His children. I was reminded of everyone who calls themselves “spiritual” but not “religious.” I remember laughing over this notion because there is nothing without our Triune Godhead, so anything good and spiritual is just God without giving him credit. In that the title “The Spiritual Marriage and Family Therapist” was born.

Again, in prayer, I felt God revealing to me that He wants to restore His people and take back all that is His. I was flooded with thoughts and images of all the ways we live today benefiting from God and despite being the disobedient bunch that we are, that He is still intervening on our behalf and trying to provide for us in hopes that we turn back to Him. Think of all the “manifestation coaches” the “energy healers” and more. I believe God wants to reclaim anything and everything that is His.

Following this, I was continuously in prayer and meditation on what to make my logo. I thought to myself, a giant Crucifix doesn’t really scream welcome to all with “church hurt”, and (thankfully) isn’t a symbol that’s lacking connection to those already connected to the Church.

I let this go, and called a friend and began to share all the ways God was moving in my life and the blessings that were coming my way. I tongue in cheek said after sharing all of this, “oh man, I better get myself an evil eye because there will be plenty of people that aren’t going to be happy for me.” Later that day on the beach after the final day of training I couldn’t get the idea of the “evil eye” out of my head. I kept thinking to myself, how funny it is that people believe an amulet can protect you from anything, and how funny it is that it’s a saying today in our culture.

I began to look up jewelry of the “evil eye” and the Eye of Providence to commemorate this moment and time in my life and couldn’t find anything I liked. I searched and searched until I suddenly felt something telling me to look down and I realized I had been wearing a bracelet with the eye logo all along.

I had bought this bracelet on Cape Cod two years earlier from a store called Eden Hand Arts. The bracelet’s name from the store was called the “Eden Eye,” so it didn’t fully register to me that it would or could be the same thing. In that moment I knew this was it, and that God (as always) had been with me leading me to this plan.

In my heart, I know there is no power behind an amulet or talisman. There is only power in, from, and through God. At the same time, it is such a widely used and recognized symbol, can you imagine if people began to see Christ’s presence, power, and authority through all of these either stolen or worldly icons?

The Eye of Providence was and is a traditionally Catholic symbol to reference God the Father’s watchful Eye over all of humanity. At some point, some goofy freemasons and occult practitioners highjacked it and turned it into a bad thing. The same can be said for the upside down cross that once was a reference to Saint Peter’s crucifixion because he believed he was unworthy to be martyred in the same way as Jesus Christ, now a satanic symbol mocking our Lord and Savior. These are just some of the many symbols that originate in our faith that has been distorted or misused to lead people away from where it all began, God.

So, I had my business name, I had my logo, and I had God’s plan to put into action. Despite nothing changing in my present reality, I was suddenly restored to an emotional and spiritual state I had never experienced. My heart was so full, and I was filled with God’s love and excitement to get started on this great calling He set out for me.

I returned home at the end of that week and went back to my life and crazy full routine a changed woman. For the first time ever, I felt alive. My heart was on fire for the Lord. In the coming weeks, I prayed and fasted for direction and confirmation on what I should be doing next. I started my business Instagram account, filed for my LLC, hired a website designer, applied to a PhD program in Psychology and Theology to further my education on this niche topic, and resigned from my position to fully dedicate myself to my budding practice and studies.

My final day of work was June 23rd, and I started my Doctoral studies that Monday, June 26th. I spent that summer preparing myself emotionally and spiritually through intentional fasting, prayer, and psychology/theology studies to begin the good work as the Lord has called me. I was able to peacefully complete my wedding planning and give myself time with God before officially opening my practice in early September, where many of my former clients resumed their work with me in a new format and therapeutic approach. 

After focusing on my studies and seeing clients virtually for the first 6 months, I then felt called to offer free services in-person to the Newman Center Catholic community on UPenn and Drexel’s campus for a year. From there I was able to hone my skills in integrating faith and psychology with active believers to give back to the faith community I love so dearly.

From this act of obedience in charity to the Newman Center, God provided for me in an office space becoming available there, where I have since opened and now see clients full-time and in-person. Located next to the beautiful Saint Agatha and Saint James Church, and being a resource to the local Catholic student community has been such a blessing. Now, just over two years after my “spiritual awakening,” I’ve never been happier, fulfilled in every area of my life, and more connected to the Lord.

My favorite verse has always been Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” I can see now in hindsight how all my life experiences up until this point, led me here. Now, in partnering with Christ on His calling for my life and my work, I can’t wait to see where He takes me next.