Since completing his master’s degree program at Carroll College, Russell will be fulfilling the role of LCSW licensure candidate at CrossWay. He enjoys weight training, fly-fishing, hiking, and cooking delicious food. He has been Married for 18 years, has six children, and is a two-time cancer survivor.
Although born and raised in Oklahoma, Russell has dreamt of living in Montana since he was a young boy. Since moving to Billings, Russell considers it both a responsibility and a privilege to serve the people here. Because of their heart for hurting children, and their desire to be a part of establishing healthy families, Russell and his wife served as foster parents for nearly five years. In fact, they adopted three of their six children through the foster system.
Having grown up experiencing abuse, neglect, violence, substance use issues, and poverty, Russell has an experiential understanding of trauma and its effect on our lives. Russell believes that it is primarily through relationship that we incur mental and emotional injury. So, then it must be through relationship that we truly experience healing. Russell’s primary focus is to establish and develop a meaningful therapeutic connection with people in order to allow the wounds clients have received to have the appropriate space and opportunity to be healed. He believes that every person should be treated with honor and viewed as a unique individual. He also believes in treating the whole person — that only when our body, soul, and spirit are all healthy — do we function at our best.