Empowering Families and Individuals

I grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the daughter of a Costa Rican mother and a Puerto Rican father, raised in NYCHA housing by a woman who did everything with very little and still managed to make it feel like enough. She was a single immigrant mother who graduated college cum laude at 46, despite English being her second language and living with ADHD. She was my greatest example of what is possible when you refuse to give up.

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When I lost her to cancer in 2015, something shifted in me. I felt called to go back to school, to finish what I had started, and to build something in her honor. I started at Essex County College, graduated with a 4.0, earned a full scholarship to Rutgers Newark where I graduated summa cum laude, and then earned my MSW from Fordham University. I became a therapist at 45, and I named my practice Pura Vida, pure life, after her homeland and the philosophy she lived by every day.

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But before all of that, I was a stay-at-home mother for over ten years, a teacher's assistant for 15 more, and a woman who built her life in Newark, NJ alongside her husband of over 30 years and their three children. I have sat in IEP meetings fighting for my own child. I have navigated systems that were not designed for people like us. I have code-switched in rooms that were not built for me. I know what it feels like to be dismissed, and I know what it feels like to keep going anyway.

I bring all of that into the therapy room with me.

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Today I specialize in working with Latina women and urban families navigating anxiety, ADHD, grief, and life transitions. My heart is especially with those who have been dismissed by systems and are ready to advocate for themselves and their children. I also work with BIPOC clients navigating predominantly white academic and professional spaces, adults processing late ADHD diagnoses, and anyone who has ever felt like the room was not designed for them.

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