Stacey received her Master’s degree in education, with a concentration in clinical mental health counseling, at Indiana State University, South Bend. Stacey’s passion and life’s work is to help people heal emotional wounds, cultivate resiliency, and promote mental wellness. She does this by providing individual, couple, and group counseling, and also by advocating for trauma-informed practices in communities.

Stacey specializes in helping people recover from trauma, addictions, depression, grief, self-esteem/self-worth issues, and other behavioral/mental health issues. Stacey has a passion for serving veterans, active military, reservists, and their families. She served her internship and advanced practicum at the South Bend, Indiana, Veterans Center.

Stacey has experience working with all ages, veterans, the LGBTQ community, and survivors of intimate partner violence. She believes in providing a client-centered holistic healing environment in which people are empowered to discover and to define their own solutions. She works with her clients using a blend of approaches including: traditional talk therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), the Eagala Model of equine–assisted psychotherapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), narrative/journaling, trauma–informed yoga, and other strategies so that she “meets” her clients at a particular point on their personal journey. Stacey has been certified in the Eagala model since 2016 to 2022. She serves as Eagala’s networking coordinator for the State of Indiana.

She has completed training in the practice of yoga to transform trauma and has started training in somatic experiencing, which focuses on getting participants to focus on their responses to stress. Through her work and her own healing journey, Stacey found that the approaches that focused on the physical, mental, energetic, and spiritual impacts of trauma proved to be the most effective and the most empowering forms of therapy. Stacey is a current member of the EMDR International Association, the American Mental Health Counselors Association, the American Counseling Association, and the Indiana Counseling Association.

Stacey has always had a love for horses and knows from firsthand experience the healing presence of the horse. When considering advancing her education, Stacey looked at the areas where she excelled and what she was passionate about. This resulted in the dream of Anam Cara, which was created in 2016 to help people heal through equine–assisted psychotherapy.