Shannon was born in Murray, Utah, moved to a few different states with her family before returning to Utah to attend BYU. She transferred to the University of Illinois at Chicago and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in communications. She focused on family for many years before joining the business world helping entrepreneurs through professional photography and brand storytelling. She specialized in creating empowering stories through photos and words to increase positive business impact in marketing. Somewhere along the way, she realized that the deeper work of helping people shift the way they saw themselves was at the heart of what she loved so she began a master’s program in clinical mental health counseling at Liberty University and will graduate in December of 2024.

Shannon integrates prevention and clinical work to minimize the ways negative patterns affect future generations. She advocates for courageous cycle breakers and creates fiercely empathetic spaces to look at foundational threats to wellness. Understanding how personal history, family attachment, trauma, abuse, and societal power imbalances can hijack our life stories, she is dedicated to helping clients unearth their true stories and step into new possibilities of health.

She has experience with attachment issues, dysfunctional family dynamics, codependency, perfectionism, anxiety, relationship issues, divorce, co-parenting, psychological abuse, betrayal trauma, LDS faith confirmation, faith crisis, religious trauma, shame, low self-worth, and grief/loss (including ambiguous grief). She uses a strengths-based and narrative approach to collaborate with clients in moving forward through transitions, trauma, and broken trust.

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Like so many of us, I’ve had to stare into the darkness of trauma to pick up the shattered pieces of the life I thought I would have. I understand the fear and grief and paralysis of that space. I found that filtering my decisions through a future story, an aspirational story, became a catalyst for growth and healing. It let me understand the necessity of moving forward in new ways that ultimately led me back to my truest self. I look for moments of guilt-free joy and revel in continuing to shed the remnants of a permission-based life.

I find happiness through hiking with my kids, taking way too many photos, reading, traveling, avoiding cooking, learning new things that I suck at, listening to loud music on long drives, watching women find their voice while raging against their silencing, collaborating in community-based initiatives, and finding the beautiful cracks in all of us that let the light pour in.