ABOUT ME

I’m Deborah and I’m a therapist, teacher, and artist exploring the meeting point between psychology, culture, and soul. My work weaves together family systems theory, developmental psychology, and the wisdom I try to gather from my lived experience and personal healing and development process.

I was born in the United States to Brazilian immigrant parents, raised by a single mother who taught me the beauty of Brazilian culture. Growing up between cultures shaped my lifelong fascination with identity, belonging, and how we find ourselves within the web of family and culture.

My first career was in multicultural business, where I studied cross-cultural psychology and organizational dynamics. Even then, I was drawn to the emotional undercurrents permeating human systems and relationships — how people carry family emotional patterns into work, leadership, and love. This led me to discover Bowen Family Systems Theory, which became a lifelong framework for understanding human connection.

Over time, my intellectual curiosity evolved into an embodied journey. I studied yoga and somatic psychology, explored the Brazilian partner dances that had always moved my soul, and worked as a florist, learning from the organic intelligence of nature.

Eventually, I returned to Brazil — drawn to its warmth, sensuality, and aliveness — to deepen my studies in dance and embodiment. There, surrounded by the coastal rainforest of Ubatuba, my life became a living laboratory of love, healing, and transformation. Falling in love reawakened ancestral wounds and catalyzed a profound inner initiation: learning to hold love without losing myself.

Through years of personal and professional integration — studying Ego Development Theory, Integral Theory, and Jungian psychology — I came to see that healing is not a linear process, but an art of becoming.

Today, I teach psychology theory and concepts online sharing what I’ve learned about self-differentiation, emotional maturity, relational healing, and human development. My mission is to help others think more deeply about the human experience throughout the lifespan.

I now live a slow, intentional, reflective life in a small beach town in the Atlantic Rainforest on Brazil’s coast — surrounded by the rhythms of the ocean, the forest, and the music and dance of a culture that continues to teach me what it means to be an ever-evolving part of life itself.