About
I am a psychotherapist, writer, and facilitator. For more than 30 years, my work has brought me into conversation with people navigating change—individuals, organizations, communities, students, leaders, and others simply trying to find their way through the uncertainties of being human.
My path to psychotherapy was not a straightforward one. Before becoming a therapist, I worked in education, consulting, organizational development, coaching, and facilitation. My work has taken me across private, nonprofit, educational, and governmental settings, as well as into communities in the United States and internationally.
Looking back, I can see that beneath these different roles has been a persistent curiosity about people: how we make meaning, how we respond to change and adversity, what helps us remain connected to ourselves and one another, and what helps us become more fully human.
Essays. Reflections. Stories. Poems. Questions.
Receive occasional writing from Chuck on presence, relationship, uncertainty, meaning, and the ongoing work of being human.
The Geography of Being Human
I grew up in Oregon. After high school, my path led me first to the East Coast and then to Okinawa, Japan, where I lived and worked for two years. I later returned to Oregon to study education.
The years that followed were anything but a straight career path. I worked in many different settings and occupations, experiences that allowed me to encounter the world of work from the inside.
By the early 1990s, those experiences began to find a direction in consulting, organizational development, coaching, and facilitation. For the next fifteen years, I worked on projects with organizations and people from many different professions and walks of life.
Looking back, I can see that I was already becoming interested in something that has remained central to my life: understanding people and the worlds we inhabit through lived experience.
For several years, I spent considerable time interviewing business leaders, nonprofit directors, educators, and community members. I published several of those interviews as a monthly column in a weekly business journal. I began those conversations thinking I was gathering ideas. Over time, I came to understand that I was learning something more important: how much can be discovered when we become genuinely curious about another person’s experience.
Eventually, my path led me into clinical mental health counseling. During graduate school, my research took me from Oregon to Moldova, where I explored questions of trauma and resilience not only in individuals but within communities and societies. I later returned to Moldova and continued that inquiry in Uganda.
I once thought of these experiences as the geography of my work. Today, I think of them more as part of the geography of being human—maps of different places, cultures, professions, relationships, and encounters through which I have continued to learn what it means to be a person in this world.
Teachers Along the Way
I have been fortunate to have many excellent teachers.
Some have been professors, mentors, therapists, writers, and colleagues whose ideas have shaped how I understand people and the world. Yet many of my most important teachers would probably never consider themselves that way.
They have been students and clients, friends and strangers, people I have interviewed, people from cultures different from my own, and people whose lived experiences have challenged assumptions I didn’t realize I was carrying.
Over the years, I have come to believe that everyone can be a teacher, often when they least expect it.
That belief has shaped the way I approach psychotherapy, writing, and facilitation. I try to meet others with curiosity rather than certainty. Their experience belongs to them. My task is not to assume I already understand it, but to listen closely enough that something new might become visible—to them, to me, or perhaps to both of us.
I continue to learn.
Where This Has Brought Me
Today, my work is grounded primarily in existential-humanistic psychotherapy and in an increasing interest in the phenomenology of lived experience.
I am interested in what happens when we slow down enough to encounter life as it is actually being lived—not simply as we explain, analyze, or wish it to be.
Presence matters to me. So do relationships, curiosity, authenticity, compassion, and our capacity to remain open when answers are not immediately available.
These concerns also shape my writing and my interest in returning to workshops and facilitation. Although the settings are different, I increasingly see them as expressions of the same inquiry:
How do we remain fully human in the midst of the lives we have actually been given?
I don’t think that question has a final answer.
It is a question I continue to live.
Professional Background & Affiliations
I am a Licensed Professional Counselor in Oregon with a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. My professional background also includes many years of consulting, organizational development, coaching, education, workshop facilitation, and work with individuals and organizations in the United States and internationally.
I currently serve on the Board of Directors of Existential-Humanistic Northwest (EHNW) and have been actively involved with the Existential-Humanistic Institute (EHI) for the past four years. I am completing EHI’s Advanced Certification Program. EHI is an important and ongoing professional community for me.
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Receive occasional writing from Chuck on presence, relationship, uncertainty, meaning, and the ongoing work of being human.