Who am I today?
You are not broken. You are not a problem to be solved. Healing happens when we remember we belong — to ourselves, to each other, to something larger than the story we've been told about who we are.
I know this not because I studied it. I know it because I had to find my way back to it myself.
I am a mother, artist, immigrant, and psychotherapist-in-training — and someone who spent a long time not knowing that I mattered.
I understand what it means to grow up feeling invisible. To learn early that your needs were too much, that you had to earn your place, that love was conditional on being easy, good, or small. I carried that story in my body for years before I found a way to set it down.
That's what brought me to this work — not an academic interest in healing, but a desperate need for it.
And what I found, slowly and through many languages, is that the body knows the way home. We just have to learn to listen to it.
How I got here:
Born in the Soviet Union and raised in Ukraine, I immigrated to Canada at 18 to pursue filmmaking and media arts. I was building a career I loved — and quietly carrying something I didn't yet have words for.
A feeling of not quite belonging. Of working hard to be seen and never fully believing I was.
At 25, an encounter with ayahuasca stopped me in my tracks. Not because it gave me answers — but because for the first time, I felt something in my body loosen that I hadn't known was held. I left my career, sold what I had, and moved to the Peruvian Amazon. What I thought would be a six-month journey became nine years.
In Peru (2008-2017):
I apprenticed with master curanderos Enrique Santiago Paredes Melendes and Reyna Luz Edery, immersing myself in Peruvian Vegetalismo — the sacred plant medicine tradition of the Amazon.
What I was learning wasn't just ceremony. I was learning how healing actually happens — not through insight or willpower, but in the body, in the subconscious, in the quiet spaces between words.
Over those years I sat with hundreds of people carrying deep trauma — grief, abandonment, shame, the particular loneliness of feeling like you never truly mattered to the people who were supposed to love you most. I learned how to hold that. How to stay present with it without flinching. How to create a space where something that had been locked for decades could finally, carefully, move.
In 2012, I co-founded Canto Luz Centre for Research and Healing in the Amazon. By 2017, I returned to Canada to start my family — and to bring everything I had learned into a form that could reach more people.
Returning to Canada (2017-Present):
When I returned, I went back to school — not to learn how healing works, but to learn how to translate what I already knew into ethical, supervised, clinical practice. I am currently completing my postgraduate studies in Expressive Arts Therapy at the CREATE Institute in Toronto, working toward my Registered Psychotherapist designation in Ontario.
The 17 years I spent sitting with people in ceremony gave me something that clinical training alone cannot: a deep, embodied understanding of how trauma lives in the body, how transformation happens beneath the level of narrative, and how to hold space for the parts of a person that have never felt safe enough to be seen.
The clinical training gives that knowledge a rigorous, ethical container — so that what I offer is both soulful and safe.
Today, I practice as a psychotherapist-in-training, facilitate workshops and speak at conferences on psychedelic integration and expressive arts, and mentor practitioners navigating the intersection of traditional and contemporary healing modalities. I am also part of the sound healing duo Project Mariri, weaving sound, art, and ceremony into community healing spaces.
TRAINING & CREDENTIALS
Education & Professional Training
Traditional Apprenticeship:
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Ongoing apprenticeship in Peruvian Vegetalismo (Amazonian plant medicine tradition) since 2008
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Direct training with master curanderos Enrique Santiago Paredes Melendes and Reyna Luz Edery
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Co-founder & former director of Canto Luz Centre for Research and Cultural Preservation (2012-2017)
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Guided over 1,000 individuals through traditional psychedelic ceremonies and healing work
Contemporary Postgraduate Education:
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Postgraduate studies in Expressive Arts Psychotherapy (EXAT), CREATE Institute, Toronto (in progress)
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Diploma in Applied Psychology (Integral Neuroprogramming), Institute of Advanced Psychotechnologies
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Advanced Diploma in Media Arts, Sheridan College
Professional Memberships & Recognition:
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Student Therapist Member, Ontario Expressive Arts Therapists Association (OEATA)
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Clinical practice under supervision towards Registered Psychotherapist (RP) designation in Ontario
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Speaker and facilitator at major conferences including CATA-OEATA and McKenna Academy
Languages:
English, Russian, Spanish
How I work
My work is about creating sacred space where you can meet yourself without judgment, where you can explore the depths of your experience without having to perform or pretend.
Whether we're working with paint and clay, sitting in meditation, processing a difficult experience, or simply talking about what's alive in you right now—every moment is an opportunity for remembering that you are whole, that you are welcome, that you belong.
As a therapist, I bring warmth, empathy, and a sense of humor into our work together. I leave my own agenda at the door and follow your cues, offering support when you need it and gently challenging you when it serves your growth. I strive to find a balance between seriousness and lightness—honoring the depth of your experience while making space for joy and laughter along the way.
Much of the work I hold is quiet and old — the grief of feeling like you never quite mattered, the exhaustion of a lifetime of earning your place, the longing for a parent who couldn't give you what you needed. I know that terrain from the inside. I know what it takes to find your way back from it. And I know how to sit with you while you do.
You are not a problem to be solved. You are a mystery to be lived, a song to be sung, a work of art in constant creation. My honor is to witness your unfolding and reflect back the magnificence I see—especially when you can't see it yourself.