About Meredith

I became a counselor because of my own experiences with body shame, disordered eating, and chronic illness.

The Basics

I am a white, cis-gender woman in my early 40s. I am a part of the fat community and I identify as “mid-fat”.

I am a Canadian immigrant to the United States and I come from a middle class background. I am also chronically ill and dynamically disabled, which means that my level of disability varies over time.

It’s important for me to acknowledge that I have many unearned privileges in life, such as being white, having had access to higher education, and being smaller than many others on the spectrum of fatness.

I have lived in Portland with my husband and cat since 2017. In my spare time, I am re-learning how to play the piano, I love crosswords, and I enjoy cycling around my neighborhood when my body is up for it!

 
 

My Story

In 2015, I felt deeply ashamed of my fat body and was on yet another diet, desperately trying to get smaller and feel more lovable. It was then that I stumbled into the world of Health At Every Size® and fat liberation.

I realized right away that I’d found a paradigm that was about to change my life. I assembled a team of helping professionals to help me make peace with food and heal my relationship with my body.

Several months later, I realized how passionately I felt about helping others walk a similar path. I left my previous career as a user experience consultant in the tech world, and became a “fat liberation coach” for the next 6 years.

I loved my coaching work but a couple of years in, I realized how often I was encountering clients with significant trauma histories. I also frequently needed to turn away people with eating disorders due to my limited scope as a coach. I chose to pursue professional mental health counseling so that I could fully serve my clients with trauma histories, eating disorders, and other mental health challenges.

My relationships with food and my body are still in process, like everyone else’s! There is no point at which we “arrive” and are “fully healed,” but I feel so much more at peace than I did before I learned these ideas, and I’d love to help you find new peace as well.

Education

 

Degrees

  • M.A. in Professional Mental Health Counseling (Lewis & Clark College)

  • B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science (University of Toronto)

 

Trainings & Certifications

  • Certified Body Trust® Provider (since 2017)

  • Level II AEDP Therapist

  • Motivational Interviewing, Basic & Advanced (2017, 2018)

  • Language of Emotions with Sarah Alexander (2019, 2022)

  • Integrating Polyvagal Theory Into Clinical Practice (2019)