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My Testimony
Hello! My name is Sarah. Thank you for visiting our website.
As a Christian, I have made many mistakes along life's path. As like every one of us, I am not perfect, I am a sinner and I have let God down in many ways, and time and time again. But I believe that through the ultimate sacrifice, Jesus paid my debt in His Blood on the Cross and through His sacrifice I am forgiven and through the grace of God, have a path to salvation. I have gotten lost on my journey and have strayed, sometimes not too far, but other times much further away than I would ever want to be today.
I have walked a lot of my life in the world and less time walking in faith, but the whole time God had his hand in my life and was shaping me for the life I now strive to live. I know that I am still a sinner, but I strive to do better every day and seeking out God's direction in everything I do, in every interaction that I have and I relay on Him to teach me strength, patience, self-love and forgiveness toward others but also self-forgiveness. I have learned very clearly in my distance from God just how truly important being close to Him really is. I believe in His purpose, even when it doesn't make sense, when it is unclear and even when it hurts, and maybe even more so when it hurts, because it teaches me how to trust in His plan, and teaches me patience and perseverance in the storm and helps me to build my strength within the battles, and in the storms and builds character and humility.
About Me!
Sarah is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) who specializes in the Borderline Experience (BPD), Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD),(PTSD), dissociation, depersonalization and derealization. Sarah has a lot of experience in working with individuals who reside within the gender spectrum and who present with concerns around sexual orientation, sexual identitiy and gender identity. And while Sarah can pull from her own personal life experiences as a reformed transwoman, Sarah dose not assume to know what is best for anyone based on their own personal experiences, as Sarah believes and understands that everyone is an individual shaped by their own life experiences and how they understand them. Sarah understands that everyone is a sum of their own experiences, and that each individual who comes into the office is the expert in the room when it comes to who they are and what they are looking for, need and want. Sarah is trauma informed and has advanced their education in the area of and around trauma narrative work and trauma informed care. Sarah continues to engage in educational opportunities in order to further enhance their understand of trauma and the impact of trauma on the individual. Sarah has several years of experience in working in Crisis Intervention, often working with clients who struggle with suicidal thinking, self-injury and substance use.
Sarah works with kids, tweens, adolescents and their families, and adults in efforts to help them identify the issues and to address their concerns in a collaborative, client centered, holistic, family oriented approach.
Another aspect of healing for me, and one I consider an incredibly important one, is my faith. I am a reformed transgender person of faith and my walk with God has saved me and help guide me to an elevated state of healing by Gods grace. A relationship with Christ is not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s totally fine with me. I do not have any agenda other than helping people find healing. I never push my religion or any type of spiritual ideologies down someone’s throat. But if this is something you’d like to explore, let me know, we can talk more in-depth about how faith and healing go hand in hand for so many.
Licensed in NY - License # 091884 - LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker)
Licensed in NC - License # C018246 - LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker)
Why Me? Clinical Perspective
I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in both New York State and in North Carolina. I have been working in the field for many years, working with children, adolescents and their families. I have worked with couples and individuals across the lifespan and within the context of many different areas of concern. I am trauma informed and have spent many years working with clients is crisis, with higher levels of acuity, including individuals struggling with suicidal ideation, with past attempts, self-injury and ongoing self-harming behaviors due to deeply embedded and chronic pain and anguish from past trauma, attachment issues, or attachment style related concerns. Many of the people I’ve worked with have struggled with some of the more intense and abrasive mental health conditions including borderline personality disorder (BDP), Post Traumatic Distress Disorder (PTSD) as well as Complex PTSD. Among other conditions, are dissociation and dissociative symptoms (depersonalization, derealization).
I am a crisis worker at heart and have worked for Mobile Crisis Services and in Psychiatric Emergency Room settings. In private practice I have worked with many people with processing past, pervasive and long-standing trauma memories, childhood adverse childhood experiences as well as very recent traumatic experiences, while identifying and managing the triggers on a daily basis.
I got into the Social Work discipline over 15 years ago, as I was trying to figure out my own life, deal with, process and move on from some of my own traumatic life experiences as well as dealing with an undefined identity crisis. I have done a lot of the work, have healed so much and now understand the need to work with others in figuring out their journey through life.
When we think about trauma, we must acknowledge that it changes us in very profound ways. Trauma can lead to deeply internalized, distressing pain, that often can distract us and derail our God given purpose. It is in healing that we can regain and realign our focus, set out on a new path and achieve the desired goals and objectives set forth in our plan. This is my purpose today.
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Why Me? Lived Experiences
Because God never gave up on me!! And He told me that he was not done with me yet!
Because I have walked through the fire. But God never gave up on me!! I gave my life to Christ at a young age, but my life has never been easy. I drifted in profound fashion. I dealt with deep and life altering depression, anxiety that was designed to destroy me and the devastating and highly destructive symptoms associated with borderline personality disorder. I was sexually abused by people who were supposed to care about me and protect me, keep me safe from the things that they would later do to me. I struggled profoundly with my gender identity for over 4 decades, still fining myself dealing with the incongruence between my identity in Christ and my identity in the flesh. I have reconciled my gender identity with my faith, have come to understand that my gender identity is walking in the flesh, but I needed to be walking in the spirit. During my most profound moments of depression, feeling lost and unwanted, and worse, unnecessary, I spent many nights praying for the end, begging God to take me, begging for answers, “why is this my life God”!? I would shout out in anger. The whole time not wanting to listen, or hear God, not willing to trust Him or believe in God and His plan, I attempted to end my life more times than I care to admit. I engaged in self-injury, became deeply invested in and embroiled in the addiction of drinking alcohol and gave up more dignity in one night of drinking then I would have ever given up in a sober moment. I blamed God for all these bad things that ever happened to me and often left every conversation with God with having more questions than answers. I went through the living nightmare of existing in the world with borderline personality disorder, feeling hated, internalizing the hate, learning to self-loath, accepting so much more self-blame than I ever should have settled for. Tried to mask and exist in relationships that were far more harmful than healthy because I just needed to feel love, wanted to feel like I mattered beyond my own understanding. Friendless and having no real meaningful connections, ones that I could actually maintain and exist in in any kind of a healthy or meaningful way, I feel deeper and deeper into isolation, bringing my despair to whole new levels of desperation, leaving me feeling even more unnecessary, unloved and irrelevant in my own existence.
My struggle with death, wanting to die and my mental health issues and in the context of my gender dysphoria side by side with my drinking have become my story. They have become my testimony of just how great God truly is. My faith in God has become the stepping stones to victory over my life that was trying to kill me, through His grace and the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, a life in the flesh and walking in the world through but only through the grace of God and His ever-enduring pursuit of my soul. Because of God I was able to overcome the flesh, and the world, overcoming the deepest and darkest places in my world, coming into the light.