About Me
I came to Canada as a refugee in the 1980s. Growing up, there was no therapist who looked like me — no one in that role who understood, from the inside, what it meant to carry two worlds at once. I wanted to become the person I didn't have. That’s how and why I created Flourish Psychotherapy.
As a multi-generational Indo-Trinidadian woman, I understand the specific weight of navigating cultural expectation and personal identity — the inheritance of what a family sacrificed, the standard attached to being exceptional, grateful, selfless. That understanding shapes the depth I bring to sitting with women carrying that same kind of weight, whatever culture it comes from.
Day to day, working with me means being met as the expert in your own life — I see myself as a guide, not an authority handing down answers. Sessions are co-created, built around what you're actually carrying that week, not a fixed script.
My approach is integrative — identity first, and the roles you've had to play built up around it. That's where the real patterns live: not in any one isolated symptom or struggle, but in how identity, nervous system regulation, and attachment are fused together, each shaping the others. We are, very much, the sum of our parts.
My role isn't to hand you a new identity or tell you who to become. It's to walk alongside you as you come home to who you've always been or to discover missing parts of Self— underneath the roles, the responsibilities, and everything you've had to become to hold it all together.
What I Believe
I don't believe you're broken.
I don't believe healing is about becoming someone else.
I don't believe rest has to be earned.
I don't believe high functioning always means healthy.
I don't believe your worth is measured by how much you carry.
I believe your body has been trying to protect you.
I believe healing happens in relationship.
I believe your story deserves compassion.
And I believe it's possible to build a life you recognize yourself in again.
Get to know me!
I've lived on three continents. In my thirties, I picked up and moved to New Zealand on my own — one stop among more than twenty countries I've traveled to, both before that move and since.
What's actually stayed with me from those years isn't the traveling itself, so much as who I became inside it — pieces of myself I found in places I never expected to be, and will probably never see again. There's a particular kind of humility that comes from standing somewhere entirely unfamiliar and realizing how small your own life is against the size of everyone else's. Humanity gets stretched in so many directions, lived in so many different ways — and somehow, seeing that up close doesn't shrink your sense of people. It grows it.
Outside the therapy room, living on Vancouver Island is an absolute dream. Exploring it with my husband, my step-son, and Winston, our Weimaraner — is a blessing I am eternally grateful for.
I'm happiest outside (as long as it’s warm -haha) — gardening, hiking, anywhere near water. The ocean has captivated me for as long as I can remember.
And one entirely unglamorous truth: clean floors make me unreasonably happy!
Education
Master of Social Work — University of Windsor
Honours Bachelor of Arts — Psychology, Criminology, and Political Science
University of Toronto
Post-Graduate Certificate — Executive Leadership Management
George Brown College
Clinical Training & Professional Development
My clinical work integrates training across trauma therapy, somatic and nervous system regulation, relational psychotherapy, and evidence-based therapeutic approaches.
Trauma and Attachment-Based Therapies
Neurobiology of Attachment and Trauma — National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioural Medicine (2023)
Trauma-Based Intervention Training Levels 1 & 2 — Hincks Dellcrest Centre (2015)
Trauma-Informed Cognitive Behaviour Therapy — Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (2017)
Somatic Attachment Healing — The Embody Lab (2022)
Somatic Attachment Healing Summit — The Embody Lab (2021)
Somatic and Nervous System Regulation
Breathwork Instructor Certification — Yogalap (2021)
Relational and Emotion-Focused Therapies
Emotion Focused Couples Therapy — Dr. Sue Johnson (2017)
The Gottman Method — Levels 1 & 2 (In Progress)
Parts Work and Compassion-Based Approaches
Internal Family Systems — PESI Institute (In Progress)
Self-Compassion Focused Therapy — Dr. Krista Neff (2019)
Additional Clinical Approaches
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy — Core Principles (2017)
Narrative Therapy — Oolagen Community Services (2016)
Brief Solution Focused Therapy — Hincks Dellcrest Centre (2015)
Additional Professional Learning
Sexual Violence Prevention and Intervention Education (2019)
Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Summit — Trauma and Mental Health (2022)
Lisa is a member In Good Standing with the Ontario College of Social Work and Social Service Workers, and the Ontario Association of Social Workers.
Registration #830083