about amy

relationships

We depend on each other to survive.  If our relationships are good, we can even thrive.  And yet we get so little instruction about how to create and maintain relationships. As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a trained mediator, I enjoy providing that guidance and accountability, informed by both my professional and lived experience.

my story

After 22 years of marriage, I went through divorce.  I know from that experience that divorce can be one of the most challenging periods of life.  I also know that like any challenge, it can become transformational.

A desire for better understanding of my first marriage and divorce led me to go back to school for a second Master’s degree, in Marriage and Family Therapy. As I began to support couples mending difficulties in relationship, I recognized the responsibility I have to study what approaches work to create happier relationships, and to put those into practice both professionally and in my own life.

co-parenting

After some recovery time post-divorce, I became a better parent.  Partly because I was no longer occupied by a difficult marital relationship, and partly because my relationship with my child was more one-on-one, outside of the context of a traditional family.  I’ve gotten to know my daughter better than I otherwise would have, which has been an unexpected and welcome gift. 

I navigated co-parenting with my ex-spouse, including a nesting arrangement and many shared holidays.  While amicability was sometimes forced, the efforts everyone made created generosity and goodwill that otherwise wouldn’t have been present.  Through those challenges, it became a value of mine to maintain a “good divorce.”

remarriage

Having had some success with a “good divorce” and post-divorce parenting, I really wanted the experience of a good marriage, too. More recently, I have married again.  My spouse and I have adult children, so we thankfully don’t have the difficulties of disciplining step-kids, and we don’t have to navigate complicated placement plans with other co-parents.  Still, we have some of the challenges and joys of blending families. In my second marriage, I continue to understand the ways in which I contributed to the difficulties of my first. And my work with couples professionally—both helping people stay together and helping people divorce as best they can—continues to contribute to my understanding of what allows relationships to work.

Through these experiences, both professional and personal, I have come to understand ways that we can stay together well, and ways that we can separate well.  I also have a clear sense of when a relationship shouldn’t—or can’t—be repaired.

support for your next chapter

I very much enjoy working with couples to improve relationships, providing guidance for relationships to move from surviving to thriving, from conflict to peace.

I’m also good at helping couples discern how much work it will take to repair a relationship, how that work would look, and if separation might be the kindest, gentlest next step.

I enjoy working with parents who have established their separate households, when they disagree on how to approach parenting and need guidance on how to best parent. And I work directly with the kids in the process through the child specialist role and as a parent coordinator. My work in that area has the primary focus of guiding people towards choices that are in the best interest of their children. 

Families are complicated and relationships are dynamic.  Sometimes they come together, and they also sometimes fall apart.  In either case, emotional support and experienced guidance helps us arrive intact at the start of life’s next chapter.

We can meet in person in Madison, Wisconsin or virtually from anywhere. I am fluent in Spanish and in the language of the Enneagram.