Michelle has extensive experience working with adolescents, children, couples and families in Toronto, the GTA, and Internationally. Her professional background of more than 25 years combined, spans from being a teacher, a minister, a director and facilitator of programs, and a counsellor for couples, families, and individuals from pre-teens to seniors.

Michelle has the gift of listening and maintains a supportive, non-judgmental stance, fostering connection and open communication. Compassion, insight, and kindness are an integral part of her character.

Areas of counselling experience include children, youth, couples, family relationships, parenting, teen pregnancy, marital issues, depression and anxiety, life transitions, trauma, racialized trauma, violence and abuse, death, grief and loss, children grief & bereavement, parent loss of child, chronic pain, self-esteem, self-harm, family recovery from suicide, family recovery from homicide, identity issues, sexuality issues, addictions, life skills, education and career planning, and more.

She works well within various therapeutic approaches that influence an integrative working model favouring Evidence-based Practices including but not limited to, brief solution-focus, cognitive behavioural, emotional focus couples and family, dialectical behaviour, family systems, structural dissociative, internal family systems, humanistic, developmental, attachment, inner child, grief & bereavement care, holistic care from a bio-psycho-social-spiritual framework, and EMDR for trauma.

Michelle has an Early Childhood Education Diploma in the Montessori Philosophy. She holds a Bachelor of Religious Education, a Bachelor of Arts in Human Services, a Master of Divinity in Clinical Counselling, and currently holds a Doctorate in Counselling and Psychotherapy. She is a sessional and adjunct professor teaching remotely to counsellors-in-training at a Seminary in Ontario, and a University in Seattle. She is certified in EMDR, Bereavement & Grief Care, ENRICH couples therapy, level one Focusing, and CBT, and is a member of CAMFT, CRPO, EMDRIA, ICEEFT and CCPA.

Michelle enjoys the outdoors with her husband and their BRT canine, cooking, reading & research, physical activities, doing outreach/mission trips, and having fellowship with friends, and family events with their adult children.