Hi, I'm Maddy — a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) and the founder of Ebb & Flow Psychotherapy. If you've landed here, there's a good chance you're a woman who's been carrying a lot — quietly, and for a long time.

I'm really glad you're here.

 

​Before Ebb & Flow

​     

     I started my career as a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) working in inpatient and outpatient community mental health. Those beige hospital walls held some of the most challenging, eye-opening, and profoundly human moments of my life. 

​

     My biggest takeaway from the hundreds of hours I spent with people — predominantly women — while they navigated some of their hardest moments? 

     

     Hard times can hit anyone at anytime.

     No one is exempt from the reality of being a human on Earth.

     This sh*t can be hard, we all need a little help sometimes, and

     the power of a little help can be life-changing. ​

​​

​What brought me here​​

​     

     I truly believe that healing happens in the presence of a compassionate witness — and nothing lights me up quite like being that witness for another person. I think this is because I've been on both sides of the helping relationship. I am as much the drowning woman stretching her hand through the water for help, as I am the compassionate therapist reaching back to pull her from the waves. It took me a while to realize I could be both — that being human is nuanced, brutal, and beautiful at the same time.

​

     For much of my young adult life, I felt as though I would always be stuck under the waves. I found my helping hand in the form of a softly-spoken, heavily tattooed Mental Health Nurse who truly witnessed me — she dug through the complexities, the conditioning, and the camouflage, and guided me through receiving a diagnosis of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD).

​

     That diagnosis didn't change my life; but the compassion she offered me during my most difficult moments did. Slowly, I began to unravel the identity I had built for myself while under the waves.

​

     I wasn't broken.

     I wasn't 'crazy', 'too much', or 'too emotional'.​

     Maybe this sounds all too familiar.

 

     As I began to de-stigmatize the process of being a woman for myself, it became clear just how many other women around me were slipping under the waves too. How many others, like me, were squishing themselves into a mold they couldn't possibly be expected to thrive in. After many, many hours of research — driven by passion and occasionally by feminine rage — I saw just how underrepresented the female hormonal cycle was in mental health research. How deeply buried this crucial part of womanhood was. How detached from our most instinctual selves we have been forced to become just to 'fit'.

​

     And there it was — the click I had been waiting for. I found my purpose and the women I was meant to serve, while simultaneously beginning to heal the rightfully pissed-off woman inside of me who had been silently screaming for alignment for most of my life.

 

     If you've made it this far, I'm willing to bet she lives within you too. If you're tired of being over-looked, over-labeled, and dismissed for your womanhood — you're in the right place. All that's left to do is reach your hand out, so that I may help pull you from the waves.

​

​​​​​​​