Welcome In
MATRESCENCE
“Maternal mental health is larger than the perinatal period. It unfolds across matrescence, through the lived experience of motherhood, and throughout a woman’s developmental lifespan…Motherhood is relational, embodied, political, cultural, and developmental” ~ Chelsea Robinson, LCSW
The sculpture is called El Esfuerzo (The Effort) also known as La Carga (The Burden) by artist Jaume Plensa located in Barcelona, Spain. The sculpture represents the invisible labor often done by women/full time caregivers, the symbolism recognizes the silent emotional and physical toll this work takes on women and illuminates the imbalance and undervalued responsibilities of caregiving that go unseen.
I’m Mary
(she/her/hers)
I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (#119679) in Santa Barbara, CA and a certified Perinatal Mental Health specialist (PMH-C), with 11 years experience as a psychotherapist. Even after a decade, I continue to feel honored and grateful to be with people in a heart-centered way. I am dedicated to providing inclusive, culturally-sensitive, equitable-care, to all individuals, and a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community. Whatever it is that brings you into therapy, know that you are welcome here and I will provide a relational, compassionate, and warm presence.
As someone who specializes in women’s wellbeing, it is with sincere reverence that I am called to support women to reconnect with their intuitive senses. As a certified Perinatal Mental Health provider, I help mother’s/birthing person feel supported during what we now call Matrescence. Matrescence, “the process of becoming a mother, encompassing the profound physical, psychological, social, and emotional changes a woman experiences during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period”. I support mothers to develop inner trust and find greater wellbeing during this transformative process. I am also experienced in supporting couples with prepartion for and the endurance of parenthood.
I live with my husband and two young children in Santa Barbara, CA. Part of the work that I do to appreciate and not appropriate is to recognize that we live on the land of the Chumash-Barbareño people. My gratitude for this beautiful place comes from a deep respect and love of nature. I find balance by spending time in outdoors as much as possible, hiking, walking, or squishing my toes in the sand.
Individual Therapy
Is a collaborative, warm-hearted, compassionate experience. I offer an intentional in-person space for those living in Goleta, Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, Montecito area. Telehealth available for people residing in California.
Couple's Therapy
I work with couples preparing for parenthood, parents in the midst of raising young children/teens, and parents who want to develop secure attachment based skills. We address anxiety, fear, communication patterns, family of origin roots, and attachment patterns. I support couples to grow “relational fitness” (active listening, empathy, healthy connections) to strengthen the parental relationship.
Goddess Group
A group for women to process and practice their relationship with boundaries. Call Mary at (805) 617-3816 to inquire about next group.
Mother's Group
In an unhurried way, we will unpack ideals and beliefs of motherhood, slow down anxious thoughts, practice compassionate inner self-talk, and learn to help balance the invisible “mother load”. Weekly fee is $55. Call (805) 617-3816 for next group date.
Areas of Experience
Complex Post Traumatic Stress
Anxiety
Birth trauma, Birth Story, VBAC informed
Matrescence
Imposter Syndrome
Depression
Challenges in Parenting
Couples Conflicts
Perinatal/Postpartum
Perfectionism
Isolation & Loneliness
Preparing for parenthood
OCD
Neurodivergence
Women's Wellbeing
I am passionate about advocating for women’s mental health and recognize the many challenges of living in a culture that values individualism, burn-out, and women as people-pleasers.
Together we practice being in relationship to one’s intuition. This is often a practice of learning to go inward while resisting looking outward.
When women reclaim their inner knowing, they find balance, centeredness, and confidence about who they are in the world. Archetypes often part of connecting with intuition include:
Sovereign Queen, Wild Woman, and the Restful Woman.
My Approach…
is gentle, sincere, relational, and deeply compassionate. I believe that people heal through attunement, safety, and understanding their attachment patterns in relationships. As a psychodynamic oriented therapist, the modalities that I lean into the most are Depth, Jungian, Attachment, Somatic therapy, and Liberation Psychology. When I am with therapy participants, I offer my full presence of being listened to, a felt experience of being seen, addressing both the expressions and the root system that grows beneath.
Something unique about my therapeutic style comes from many years of training in-person in large group format with the renowned Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes Reyes (Jungian Psychoanalyst). I am initiated into what Dr. Estes calls Curanderismo (healing) ways. I am experienced in helping my clients reclaim their ancestry (original ways of knowing), listen to night dreams, understand our story is medicine, attune to one’s instincts and intuition (for many this is learning to trust inner resources for knowing), to grow consciousness, to resist overculture’s denial of experience and attend to our lived experience.
I am dedicated to decolonizing the ways I work, think, and learn in private practice. I recognize that we are living through cruel, harmful, abusive, and oppressive times caused by systemic-cultural-colonized ways. Decolonizing my practice is informed by mental health leaders such as Dr. Jennifer Mullan, PhD and author of Decolonizing Therapy. She states that “therapy is inherently political and calls for clinicians to address the roots of mental health oppression by centering colonial and historical trauma”. My offering as a mental health provider is to confront Eurocentric models of care that fail to acknowledge the origin of suffering caused by systems of oppression. Ways that I decolonize my private practice:
- use healing language like “therapy participants” instead of longstanding medicalized “clients”. In so doing, seeing people as therapy participants acknowledges together; a person who partakes in, to share in their healing.
- trauma-informed and nonpathologizing healing care
- centering realtionality, collective resilience, ancestral wisdom, cultural humility
- dedicated to unlearning my own implicit biases and addressing harmful colonization within mental health profession
