My name is Anna, and I’m a therapist.

I hope this page helps you see if we’d be a good fit.

I’m a cisgendered straight white woman (she/her). My hair is (usually) pink and my tattoos are of fairy tales and greek myths. I have a *dramatic* cat named Sylvia whom I adore. She is named after a character I performed in a play, not Sylvia Plath. (Why does everyone think that?!) My husband immigrated to the US, and together the three of us have lived in New York, Lisbon, Atlanta, and Amsterdam.

I like my coffee with oat milk or black - but with like, a GIGANTIC blob of whipped cream on top. Immersing myself into audiobooks while cooking, biking, or painting are a few of my true loves. My favorite book is still probablyThe Night Circus by Erin Morganstern, as I’m a sucker for magical realism & love stories.

My Clinical Background

Image provided by patient’s family

Image provided by patient’s family

 
Image provided by patient’s family

Image provided by patient’s family

 

I received my masters degree from New York University and completed clinical internships for both creative arts therapy and child life in children’s hospitals in NJ and NY. I began my career at a major hospital in Manhattan, where I co-facilitated a peer supervision group for my colleagues to help support them in their clinical work and created therapeutic TV programing for the hospital’s CCTV channel alongside my own work with patients.

My work with patients was very special to me. I sat beside a teenage boy with cancer as he shaved his head for the first time and we debated which Star Wars movie was best, I wrote poetry with a 12 year old girl who had attempted suicide after being bullied, helped parents throw their child’s last birthday party in their hospital room, and explained dying from cancer to a seven year old in words she would understand before taking her to see her terminally ill mother for the last time.

Yeah, it was heavy stuff.

But I am so grateful and honored to have stood beside these families in what were some of their darkest times.

My Why

I love this work because I have lost and struggled too. As a teenager I witnessed loved ones get sick and die, and then spent years trying to fill my grief gap on my own. I self-sabotaged in relationships with friends and betrayed myself in romantic relationships over and over again while blaming it on my (or their) zodiac sign. I couldn’t figure out why I was so afraid of being abandoned that I was willing to abandon myself.

I decided to go to graduate school for drama therapy after a short career as a teaching artist. One of my dance students was a boy with ASD who was making remarkable socio-emotional progress in our classes. I thought I had “discovered” arts and therapy - but nope! Turns out it’s definitely already a thing, lol. I started the program at NYU, but when I decided to go to therapy as well it honestly changed my life. Now it’s what I do!

Production Image of ENTER THE UNDERWORLD, a play I wrote and performed about creative arts therapy, grief, and cancer.

Production Image of ENTER THE UNDERWORLD, a play I wrote and performed about creative arts therapy, grief, and cancer.