Mary Helen believes, along with Joan Didion, that “we tell ourselves stories in order to live” and that making sense of life’s challenges is crucial to surviving—and yes, thriving. She considers it a sacred task to sit with people, witnessing their essential dignity and depth of emotion, as they find meaning in hardship and purpose across life’s stages. She brings an Internal Family Systems (IFS) perspective to understanding those stories—and who is telling them.

Trained in Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) at Mount Mercy University, where she got her Masters, Mary Helen qualified for her trainee MFT license working with individuals, couples, and families. She now enjoys working with families of all sizes and configurations, with anyone who has ever been a part of a family, with children, and with anyone who has ever been a child. She works to maintain cultural humility and is attentive to the role of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability status in clients’ experiences of life.

A lifelong people-watcher, Mary Helen got her Bachelors in Anthropology from Smith College in Massachusetts in 2005, then a Masters in the personal essay at the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program in 2012.