Fragile and guarded, I sat in front of Linzi for our initial meeting. I noticed her white-nail polish, tanned skin, highlighted long hair, and maybe an Abercrombie and Fitch turquoise t-shirt. My heart sank as I thought that here sat a cheerleader therapist-in-training, a former R.A., a university student body officer, an aromatherapy consultant, a princess of pep. Her frippery seemed antithetical to the sadness I felt, and ever far from the burned-out seeds of ineffable depth I thought I knew. There would not be a connection here, but proceed I would, as marcher in a mildewing mold.
The words she spoke or the emotions she articulated in that brief meeting have been forgotten, but for a rare time in my entire life, I cried in front of another person without self-consciousness, and I felt a spiritual resonance and engagement with my own story in a powerful and intelligent way, far from the superficial judgment and despondency that characterized my assumptions about "the way therapy works." Here was a rich ear and a strident energy, non-exploitative, coherent in heart and words, and someone who seemed to respect the dignity of human beings with real flaws. It was a very unique exchange and from that time, I have been blessed to witness and receive Linzi's powerful gift of advocacy, deep listening, unabashed advice, direct communication, and re-orientation of self-judgment towards healing and wholeness.
There truly is a miraculous love and capacious healer in Linzi. She has worked with me over the last couple of years to help orient towards a more realistic but also hopeful and transcendent self. She continuously articulates back to me layers of complexity and nuance that seem far too labyrinthian for me to express to most others. And she has also confirmed the most basic and simple essences of my heart.
Linzi is a spiritualist, a non-conformist, a risk-taker, a direct communicator, a spark of divinity, an entrepreneur in creating client-centered healing services, and a companion of human experience--the woundedness and the healing, and the cycle of these in surfeit. Through it all, she is most powerfully one's advocate and coach, unbending in strategy and solidarity. I so often wish I could recommend her to everyone in need. read more
