Patricia Contaxis, M.A. is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, now retired. For more than three decades, she counseled middle school and high school age youth, parents, couples, and individual adults in public settings and private practice. She was on the faculty of Diablo Valley College and was an adjunct professor of psychology at John F. Kennedy University. Her community clinical work included: school-based counselor at Walnut Creek Intermediate School and Oakland’s Ralph Bunche School; staff therapist for The Ann Martin Children’s Center, La Cheim Residential Treatment Centers, and the Bay Area Youth Development Agency; and 22 years as consulting clinical director to Building Futures, an East Bay agency providing emergency shelter, domestic violence programs and transitional and permanent housing to women and children. Patricia currently consults to Bay Area schools on social, behavioral and community issues. She is a popular public speaker. The list of Bay Area schools where she has given parent education programs include Albany, Berkeley, El Cerrito, and Piedmont public schools; The Julia Morgan School for Girls, Bishop O’Dowd, and St. Theresa School in Oakland; The Dandelion Nursery School in Berkeley, and Blue Skies in Oakland.

Patricia’s writing appears in The Coachella Review, The Loch Raven Review, Pithead Chapel, Wrath-bearing Tree, Rivanna Review, The Pluralist, San Antonio Review, and Notes From The Seashore. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the California Institute for Integral Studies. Retired after more than thirty years as a marriage and family therapist, she now spends her time on Trail Patrol with the National Park Service, and on Hawk Watch with the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory. Patricia also enjoys playing mandolin and fiddle with her band Tangled Root, and wandering the coastal hills with her family, their very good boy, and a pair of 8×42 field glasses.