About Maria

I was born in Brattleboro, VT and have found myself back home after years of travel. My family moved to an international community called Auroville in southern India when I was 10, and while I returned to New England for (boarding) high school, my love for international travel began young. I have travelled all over the world, and have loved the relationships that travel has brought into my life. 

I studied Public Relations at Boston University, and started a social media marketing and PR consultancy in Boston upon graduating. After realizing that the pace and lack of community in the city didn’t support me, I moved home to Vermont, where my desire to recognize the embodied experiences of trauma and build healthy communities through that work led me to pursue a master’s degree in Dance Movement Therapy and Mental Health Counseling at Antioch University New England. 

My experiences of living in different countries, in building relationships across difference, and choosing family with myriad identities and experiences, has brought me to an intersectional and systemic analysis of the ways that we carry our emotional, intellectual, and embodied experiences. It is my hope that through counseling that acknowledges these realities, folks will be able to come to themselves and their communities with more tools and skills for navigating interpersonal and institutional life.

My identity intersections: I am queer (she/they pronouns) and autistic. I am a descendant of white settler colonizers (father’s side) and refugees (mother’s side). I have multiple chronic health conditions and am disabled (ask me what this means–it may not be what you think). I am a mother to an AMAB child and follow the Visible Child parenting paradigm. I embody fat liberation and body neutrality. I am anti-racist and anti-colonialist. 

As a side note: I will blame the patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy for a lot of your mental health struggles. 

I currently reside in East Dummerston on stolen indigenous land belonging to the Wabanaki, N’dakina (Abenaki / Abénaquis), and Pennacook peoples.  Learn about the land you live on.