About Nikki: Online Therapist in Ann Arbor, MI

Meet Nikki!

I spent my 20s building a career in social work and psychotherapy on the East Coast. My early 30s looked different than I planned — I was widowed young, and grief became something I understood from the inside out.

That experience shaped everything that came after. For years, I worked primarily with widows and others navigating significant loss — people who, like me, had their lives interrupted by something they didn't choose and had to figure out who they were on the other side. I hosted CEU trainings for other clinicians on grief. I became someone who knew this territory well, personally and professionally.

Then COVID hit. And like a lot of people who spend their lives holding space for others, I started to burn out.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I began to understand that what I had been calling burnout — the overwhelm, the anxiety, the feeling of feeling unlike myself — had a name I hadn't considered: perimenopause.

That realization changed the direction of my work. I became deeply immersed in the research on women's midlife mental health, frustrated by how little support existed that took it seriously, and clear about who I most wanted to serve. Today I work primarily with midlife women — women navigating perimenopause, life after illness, grief and loss, divorce, widowhood, empty nests, and the question of what comes next.

I also teach a CEU training for Michigan therapists on perimenopause and mental health — because the more clinicians who understand this, the better served our clients will be.

I bring nearly 20 years of clinical experience to this work. But more than that, I bring the firsthand knowledge of someone who has lived through grief, burnout, and a midlife transition that asked me to rebuild from the ground up.

If you're in the middle of your own version of that — I know what it feels like. And I know what's possible on the other side.