Coming Home to Whispering Winds

Full time, full focus

This fall, I left the VA and returned my full professional focus to Whispering Winds Therapy. If you've been a client, thought about reaching out, or worked alongside me as a colleague, I wanted you to hear it from me directly, along with what this change means for the practice.

What the VA years gave me

For several years, I worked with Veterans in an integrated primary-care setting while Whispering Winds continued alongside that work. My days there centered on memory testing, end-of-life planning and care, advance directives, and case management. It was meaningful work, and I learned a great deal from it.

I also loved the culture. It was an honor to serve Veterans who had served our country, whether they'd been plumbers or in special operations. Some of my favorite moments were simply hearing people's life stories: the careers they had in and out of the service, and everything that happened in between.

Why I came back

The VA work was medical and often short term. It mattered, and it also wasn't the reason I became a therapist.

I missed therapy. I missed sitting with someone over time and creating the kind of space where they could work through their shit, because life is hard.

I noticed it most when I came home from my training in EQUUSOMA® Horse-Human Trauma Recovery. Each time, I felt a misattunement in myself, a gap between the work I was training for and the work I was doing every day. After a while, that gap got hard to ignore.

There was a personal reason, too. Private practice gives me the flexibility to be a present mom, and that matters to me as much as anything else here.

So I'm back to the work I set out to do. Having my full attention on Whispering Winds has also given me room to look closely at what this practice is and how I describe it, and a few things have shifted.

Where this started

Whispering Winds didn't begin as a business plan. It began with horses, long before I had any clinical language for why they mattered to me.

I started riding in sixth grade on a neighbor's mules. By around 2010, I had started imagining a life as a therapist with horses somehow part of that work. I didn't have a framework for it yet. The experience came first, and the language came later.

Whispering Winds Therapy opened in 2020, and I moved into full-time private practice in 2021. The VA years came after that, with the practice running alongside. Coming back to it full time feels less like starting something new and more like finally giving an old idea the room it always needed. (If you want the longer version of that story, it lives on my About page.)

What's changed

A new website and a new way of saying it. Whispering Winds has a new tagline: Where connection makes room for change. It describes what I actually do better than anything I've used before. I don't fix or heal anyone. I try to create conditions where awareness, connection, and choice have more room.

Clearer names for what I offer. People have used a lot of different words for horse-related services, and those words describe very different things. So I've gotten specific:

• Traditional psychotherapy by telehealth for clients physically located in Idaho or Washington at the time of the session.

• Traditional psychotherapy in an outdoor setting at my property in Athol, Idaho. The horses live here, so you may see them, but they aren't part of the session. Meeting outdoors is a change in setting, not a change in therapeutic modality.

• Equine-assisted psychotherapy, where horses are intentionally incorporated into treatment. It's mental-health psychotherapy, primarily ground-based, and no horse experience is needed. It is not riding instruction, therapeutic riding, horsemanship, or coaching.

• Clinical supervision for developing clinicians in Idaho and Washington.

Kids are welcome. I now work with children age 6 and older, adolescents, and adults. When I work with kids, parents are part of the process. Children aren't dropped off to be fixed, and supporting a child often asks something of the adults who love them, too.

A different first step. I no longer offer free consultation calls. The first appointment is a paid 55-minute session, because I think fit is easier to judge by actually experiencing how I work than by talking about it for ten minutes.

Insurance. For traditional psychotherapy, I'm contracted directly with First Choice Health Network and work with Aetna, Cigna, Carelon, and Providence through Headway. Coverage varies by plan, service, and location. Equine-assisted psychotherapy remains private pay.

What hasn't changed

The heart of the work is the same. I'm still more curious than corrective. Most patterns developed for good reasons, even when they're causing problems now, and I'd rather understand a pattern before deciding it needs to go.

I still pay attention to more than insight. Plenty of people already understand their patterns and still find their body reacting before they can choose something different. Therapy with me includes a lot of talking, along with attention to what the body and nervous system are doing in the moment.

The horses are still partners, not tools. Their welfare, consent, and agency are part of the clinical work, and a therapeutic goal doesn't override what a horse is telling me about its willingness to participate.

I'm also still the same person: warm, direct, comfortable with complexity, and not especially interested in taking myself too seriously. The difference is that I get to bring all of that here, full time.

If you've been waiting for an opening

I currently have availability for new clients, primarily during daytime hours on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Traditional psychotherapy is $180 per 55-minute session and may be billed to insurance. Equine-assisted psychotherapy is $225 per 55-minute session and is private pay.

You can call or text 509.386.2888 or email info@whisperingwindstherapy.com. Text or email is generally the easiest way to reach me. Let me know whether you're looking for therapy for yourself or your child, what kind of appointment interests you, and your general availability. Please leave sensitive health or clinical details out of that first message.

If you've worked with me before and want to return, reach out the same way. If you're a colleague or referral partner, I'd love to reconnect.

Whispering Winds is an outpatient practice and doesn't provide crisis services. If you need immediate support, call or text 988, call 911, or go to your nearest emergency department.