About Me
I am a second-generation, Chinese Canadian and a settler living in the Greater Toronto Area. I am an Expressive Arts Therapist and Masters of Counselling Psychology student at Yorkville University. I am a student therapist and am supervised by a Registered Psychotherapist.
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I am an artist, a poet and storyteller, and a creative arts facilitator. When I went through a difficult time, the arts were there to hold me and help me cope. Poetry helped me crystalize my feelings of helplessness, visual arts helped express what words could not and music opened up pathways to creativity that I thought I had lost. Expressive Arts Therapy called to me because it combines my desire to help others with my love for arts, imagination and play.
Racism, LGBTQ+, Sexism and Mental Health
Girl with Roses - Asta Au (2020)
I know what it's like to be the Asian kid living in a white society. I grew up internalizing the idea of being less than by virtue of my skin. I grew used to being ignored, as if I was invisible to my peers. I've had to learn how to navigate this society that was not created with me and my people in mind.
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The expectations and stereotypes of being the Asian woman have played into who I am today. How people interact with me, how people see me, those are things I can't change. I know what it's like to struggle with figuring out my queer identity and realizing that I am not broken or unlovable. I know what it's like to keep an integral part of myself hidden from family, from coworkers, from communities I work in. Sometimes it's not safe or comfortable to be authentically me.
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And I've found that, that's okay. I live in a society where I've had to do that for survival. And, I still do. As a person of colour, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, as a woman, as someone who know what living with mental illness is like, I've had to set up boundaries in order to protect myself and be safe.
But in therapy, I don't want to have to censor myself, or play a role, or hide parts of myself. And that's the kind of therapist I aspire to be. One where I can encourage you to be all of you and feel safe and supported enough to do so.