Bio

Linda has been an occupational therapist for over 30 years and has specialized in working with people with complex pain conditions for the last eight years using her 3-part framework: Restore Your Body, Rebuild Your Life, Renew Your Joy. Linda is a Brené Brown Daring Way™ certified facilitator, a clinical advisor for the development of the Occupational Experience Profile tool, teaches courses for OT practitioners and multidisciplinary groups on best practices in pain rehabilitation, administrates the PAIN OT Facebook study group, and is a contributing author to the newly updated AOTA position paper on the role of occupational therapy in pain management. Linda is also a passionate advocate for the profession of occupational therapy and serves as the current president of The Occupational Therapy Association of Colorado. Prior to specializing in pain care, Linda spent over ten years of her career specializing in brain injury and stroke rehabilitation. She has also been a complex seating and positioning specialist, and has worked in acute hospital, burn unit, acute and sub-acute rehabilitation, outpatient clinic, and home health settings. Personal note: I am passionate about helping OT practitioners understand the value of their role in working with people in pain! I had a personal experience of four years of persistent pain and all the traditional therapy and medical treatments I was prescribed failed to improve my pain. It was then that I realized I had done everything except OT and that occupational therapy was not a job I performed, it was a core belief I had – that every person has the ability to influence their own health and well-being and live a meaningful life if provided with the support and skills to do so. I knew that if I “OT’d” myself my life and pain experience would be better. Since that time, I have relentlessly researched. Personally applied, and taught others about current pain science and therapy and the biopsychosocialspiritual (BPSS) factors that influence our health and well-being. I am thrilled to share that I am now eight years chronic pain free and am back to enjoying meaningful activities I was told I would never be able to do like running, hiking, and playing golf!