Path of Love and Resilience LLC

Couples Therapist, Relational Therapist

Licensure/ Credential(s):

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in the State of Wisconsin.

Short Bio:

By midlife, most couples are running on a set of agreements nobody ever said out loud. Then something shifts — perimenopause, the last kid pulling out of the driveway, a parent's diagnosis, a body that doesn't do what it used to, a loss you're still carrying — and the old agreements stop holding. Women often describe it to me in almost the same words: I can't keep doing this the way I've been doing it.

That usually isn't a sign the marriage is failing. It's a sign the relationship needs to grow, and that neither of you was ever handed the skills for this part.

I think about couples developmentally. You built a set of skills early on that carried you through a certain amount of stress. Midlife raises the stress on every front at once — hormonal, financial, generational, existential — while the skills stay where they were. So conflict escalates, or it goes quiet. That's a capacity gap, not a character flaw. Repair, regulation, and honest negotiation are learnable at any age.

I work exclusively with couples, and my sessions are experiential. We don't only talk about the fight from last Tuesday — we slow down what's happening between you in the room, so you can catch the pattern while it's running and learn to interrupt it. I hold both of you at once. I'm not a referee, and I won't be one partner's ally against the other. I'm warm, prepared, and direct. I normalize without minimizing and challenge without shaming, and I'm particularly attuned to partners who were socialized out of emotional language and genuinely don't have words yet.

What brings midlife couples to me:

-The empty nest. You're facing someone you haven't had unstructured time with in twenty years. There's grief in that, often relief, and sometimes the unsettling question of what you have in common now.

-Long marriages where partners have stopped being able to talk. The same fight in different clothes. Or no fight at all, which is often worse.

-Sex, desire, and changing bodies. Desire discrepancy, pain, medical changes, and the years of careful silence that built up around all of it. This is a normal thing to bring to couples therapy, and I work with it directly.

-Grief. A parent, a child, a friend. A terminal diagnosis in the family, or your own. Grief almost never lands on two people the same way, and couples often mistake that difference for a failure of love.

If you're not sure you want to work on the marriage — or if one of you has a foot out the door while the other is fighting to stay — ordinary couples therapy tends to stall, because you aren't working on the same project. Discernment counseling is a short, structured process built for exactly that moment. The goal isn't to save the marriage or end it. It's for each of you to reach clarity and confidence about which direction you want to go. I offer it, and I'll tell you honestly if I think it's the better place to start.

You're not looking for a perfect relationship. You're looking for one that feels workable, and worth it.

Who I Serve:

Couples and committed partners navigating midlife and menopause transitions, empty nest and retirement, communication and conflict, sex and desire discrepancy, grief and illness, caregiving for aging parents, infidelity and betrayal, blended families. I work across the full continuum of commitment and identity — heterosexual, queer, lesbian, gay, trans, bisexual, and non-monogamous partners — from first cohabitation to couples of forty-plus years.

Core Offerings:

Couples therapy, marriage counseling, relational therapy for committed partners, discernment counseling

Location:

Madison