"The land knows you, even when you are lost."
- R.W. Kimmerer
Hi! I'm Justine.
I am so happy you are here! This practice was born out of my love for nature (especially birds), and the curiosity and peace I have found in the woods since I was small. I stumbled into therapy world in college, received my Masters in Counseling, and have been practicing since 2016. I received my LPC in Pennsylvania in 2022.
My connection and love of incorporating nature and birds into my therapeutic work started as I began writing my dissertation for my Counselor Education PhD (which is still in progress!). Teaching counseling graduate students at Carlow University is a newer venture, but one I have come to love greatly. Being able to bring my love of nature into my work is a great privilege and honor; I am glad to have nature and birds as my co-therapists.
I am introverted nerd who loves to read - Lord of the Rings often finds its way into my daily life. I am a birding enthusiast and currently have a small, but growing, lifer list! My memories of being outdoors with my family growing up are some of the best ones I have. We loved walking through the woods, looking for animals, and finding little trinkets nature had to offer. My loved ones are major influences in my life, and I value and cherish them greatly. Other fun things I like include: cross-stitching, Halloween, independent and rare bookstores, historical tours, native gardening, hockey, and going to the movies.
The story behind Birdsong.
In the natural world, silence signals danger. Birds hush when a threat approaches, reserving their song for moments of peace. A forest filled with birdsong communicates an instinctive baseline of safety—a signal our nervous systems evolved to understand over millennia. Tuning into their song offers a primal, nervous-system cue that it is safe to settle, breathe, and drop our guard.
Throughout human history, birds have served as messengers, teachers, and symbols of the threshold between Earth and sky. Long before modern science, cultures worldwide recognized avian life as vital guides for human consciousness and community well-being. Revered in traditional lineages as carriers of prayer and intuition, birds mark our moments of grief, transition, and awakening. Watching a bird take flight offers an immediate psychological shift—inviting us to step back, view our lives from a more expansive perspective, and remember our capacity for movement, adaptability, and liberation. Migratory returns ground us in ancestral memory, seasonal rhythms, and the enduring continuity of life.
Also, birds are cool and we love them very much.
Land acknowledgement & support for land back.
Birdsong Counseling & Ecotherapy operates on the unceded, ancestral lands of the Osage, Haudenosaunee, Shawnee, Lenape, and Monongahela peoples, who have stewarded the forest, waterways, and ecosystems of the Ohio River Valley and the South Hills of Pittsburgh for thousands of generations.
As a practice rooted in ecopsychology, we recognize that true ecological healing cannot be separated from indigenous sovereignty and land justice. We acknowledge that the historic and ongoing displacement of Indigenous peoples, along with the extraction and privatization of land, underpins modern systems of environmental degradation and human disconnection.
We commit to actively challenging Eurocentric and settler-colonial frameworks in mental health and outdoor therapy by centering reciprocity, non-extraction, and ecological belonging in our work. We commit to encouraging clients and community members to learn about the living Indigenous histories of Western Pennsylvania and directly support regional efforts to return land rights and stewardship to Native leadership.