Suite G1, Intercare Medfem Clinic, 1 Nursery Lane, Bryanston, Johannesburg, Gauteng , South Africa
I'm Here to Listen
But Also Here to Learn
Who am I
My Practice
I’m Mandy.
A mother, a step mother, a cancer surviver. I've faced infertility, divorce, loss and I have also questioned purpose.
I know that life rarely gives us answers—only moments.
Like you, I’ve wondered why some suffer while others don’t, and how we keep going when life feels heavy.
I have sat in the therapy chair myself. I have been a great friend, an absent friend. I have read books, even written some. And yet I still come back to Freud’s line: “There are no happy lives, only happy moments.”
That once felt disheartening. But over time, I have chosen to sit with people in their darkest moments—when self-talk is loudest, when suffering feels unrelenting. Not because I have the answers. I don’t. But because I believe in resilience. And resilience can be taught. Skills count.
In our fast world, my clients already have access to information—AI, Wellness Programs, apps, courses, social media. Insight is not the problem. Often, insight itself is crippling. What’s missing is a space where the heart can open to that information. That is the space I create.
My sessions are different. I talk. I write on the board. Maybe I don’t always listen enough. But my promise is that you will leave with something practical. A skill. Something you can use to change a marriage, face a diagnosis, navigate burnout, or survive a loss.
Oprah Winfrey once said therapy is about the “aha” moment. You may walk away from a session tired, overloaded, unsure—but something will stick. Something we said together will resonate. And that is where the change begins.
Sometimes it takes one session. Sometimes it takes many. Sometimes it’s just for a moment, or just for a diagnosis. I can’t change your reality or mine. But I can tell you what to expect. I can show you how others have walked this path. And I can teach you how.
And even if I can't, maybe I can fill your cup a little.
Therapy won't erase your pain.
But maybe it will give you the tools to hold it better.
.
My Treatment Focus
My focus is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which recognises that our thinking drives our actions. We can’t always change our circumstances, but we can change the way we think about them. Every day, I’m amazed at the insights I learn from my patients. As a therapist, I don’t believe I have all the answers—but each person I meet fills in the blanks, teaching me as much as I hope to teach them.
My Patient Promise
My promise is simple: I will sit with you in the hard moments and give you tools to make them lighter. Whether I am part of your journey for a reason or just for a season, my focus is on leaving you with something practical and lasting.
My Focus
Infertility
Infertility is often seen as a medical issue—but it’s so much more than that. It’s a journey. A long, emotional one. To me, it feels like trying to summit Everest.
I’ve never climbed a mountain, but I use the metaphor often because it speaks to how determined, brave, and exhausted you can feel. Not everyone who sets out reaches the top—at least, not the way they planned. Only about 29% of Everest climbers make it to the summit. The rest face detours, storms, or different outcomes. But all are courageous. All are changed.
Infertility is similar. Some reach their goal quickly. Others take longer. Some find new paths—surrogacy, donor conception, adoption. Some step away. But every path deserves respect.
And here’s the truth: no one climbs Everest alone. You need a guide—someone who knows the terrain, who can help you navigate the unknown.
Let me be that guide. You don’t have to walk this road alone. Your summit may look different from someone else’s—but it is no less meaningful.
Keep climbing. Keep hoping. And when you need a hand—I’m here.
Having struggled to have children myself, I know this journey all too well. I have walked it personally, and I have walked it alongside many couples. I have also walked it with single parents and grandparents. My role is to help you make sense of the choices, regain perspective, and find a way forward—the goal is to summit Everest, but there are many ways to do this.
Egg, Sperm and Gamete Donation
Making the decision to use an egg or sperm donor is often filled with loss, uncertainty, and confusion. It raises difficult questions about disclosure, transparency, and what to share in the future.
But while the decision is complex, it is a process that can be managed with the right guidance. For many years, I have assessed donors and supported couples in coming to terms with moving forward when other avenues have been exhausted.
This includes working with both known donors and recipients, and facilitating the creation of Known Gamete Agreements to ensure clarity, fairness, and emotional readiness for everyone involved.
When you finally hold that baby, every struggle, every choice, every tear makes sense. Without your journey, this life wouldn’t be here
Surrogacy
Surrogacy is perhaps one of the most complex and invasive forms of fertility treatment—and one of the least understood. It is both an extraordinary gift and a journey filled with uncertainty. With the right support, that journey can be made lighter.
I have been conducting forensic surrogacy reports for over thirty years, before there were no guidelines and all I could do was a one-page recommendation to the Fertility Specialist. Now South Africa stands at the forefront of surrogacy worldwide. Our law requires a Surrogate Motherhood Agreement, confirmed by the High Court, which provides clarity and protection for all parties involved.
Beyond the legal process, I focus on guiding and mediating the surrogacy journey once the application is granted—helping to strengthen communication, manage expectations, and support the unique relationship between intended parents and surrogate
Post Natal Depression
"My friends all seemed to be coping. They were smiling, they weren’t complaining. They had the apps, the routines, the breastfeeding down. I didn’t know they were silently screaming—waiting for one of us to admit: this is not as great as I expected.”
When people hear the words postnatal depression, they often imagine a mother who doesn’t bond with her baby or might even harm her child. But this is not what PND truly is.
Most of the mothers I see first present with anxiety—restlessness, worry, racing thoughts—followed by depression. This doesn’t mean they don’t love their babies. You can love someone deeply, but it’s hard to feel connected to a newborn who cries constantly, doesn’t soothe easily, and leaves you sleep-deprived. Bonding takes time and does not define love.
More and more mothers, and now fathers, are presenting with PND. Are they speaking out more, or is the prevalence higher?
It’s important to distinguish PND from postnatal psychosis. While around 1 in 7 women experience PND, only 1 in 500 births result in psychosis. Psychosis is rare but severe—it places both mother and baby at risk. PND, on the other hand, is far more common, underdiagnosed, and very treatable.
Most PND begins around week 3. Initially, babies sleep a lot, and many mothers experience the “baby blues” around day 3–5. This tearfulness is linked to hormonal changes (including prolactin when breastfeeding). But as the weeks pass, babies become more alert just as sleep deprivation intensifies.
Sleep loss is not minor—it is known to cause depression, confusion, and even psychosis after just 48 hours. For mothers, exhaustion lowers tolerance and increases anxiety. Over time, that anxiety can become chronic and evolve into depression. Not only depression but trauma about the potential of a difficult night or a long weekend.
I have developed a questionnaire that indicates risk Before pregnancy and during pregnancy. We can identify your risk and manage it before your baby is born.
Preparing for Parenthood
An emotional and mental health check
More Than a Class
This won't be an antenatal class.
It is not a baby-and-me group.
It is more than that.
It’s a space to prepare emotionally for pregnancy, birth, and parenthood.
A place to ask the hard questions, to identify your values, to learn coping skills for the overwhelming moments, and to discover you are not alone.
Because parenting isn’t just about a birth plan or baby milestones.
It’s about preparing your mind, your heart, and your relationships for the journey ahead. . This is a mental health preparation program for parents, couples, and mothers who want to prepare for the reality of pregnancy and life after birth.
Together, we will:
- Identify your values: Understand the most important reason you want to have a child.
- Face the realities: Learn how to cope with the physical and emotional demands of pregnancy.
- Build practical skills: Develop emotional strategies for birth and the weeks to follow.
Parenting becomes more predictable—and less overwhelming—when you have the right tools. And doing this with others makes it even more powerful.
Following birth, you’ll have the option to join a therapeutic support group designed for new mothers. These groups offer connection, community, and shared experience—because sometimes the highlight of a week can be a simple outing to the paediatrician, where you don’t feel alone.
Most importantly, these courses remind you: you are not alone.
Courses will commence in the new year depending on demand
Grief counselling
Learning to carry loss
I Wasn’t Ready to Let You Go
I am lying in bed, watching the sunset as I write this. It has been 20 sunsets since Covid took you. I measured your absence in hours at first. Now it is days. I know it will then be every Sunday. Will it ever be every year?
I remember the morning you passed—I opened the blinds and watched the sunrise with trepidation, waiting to phone the hospital. It feels like yesterday, but also impossibly far away.
My love for you transcends your mortality. How do I wake up tomorrow? And the next? I speak about you in the present because I have to believe you are still around me. I have to believe there is something beyond your senseless death.
You lived a life of unconditional generosity, always worrying more about us than yourself. During the first lockdown you wept—not for your own health, but for ours. You sanitized every item, walked laps around the garden with Dad, prayed through the night, naming us each in turn. You were so careful, and yet you were the one Covid stole.
I remember the night before you died. Messaging you, calling, trying to comfort you as you worried about the nurses not having enough oxygen for the other patients. You never asked. When I called you in the early hours of Sunday morning, you spoke. You listened. You said you were ok. I now know you were drowning. Even then, you said thank you. Who does that when they’re dying?
I few hours later, I called the ward, expecting to hear you were stable. Instead, we were summoned to a ward where we were met not with you breathing, but with a white sheet. The scream of recognition still haunts me. We dressed you in your favourite pajamas and socks so you wouldn’t be cold. I kissed you and whispered I love you—words I hadn’t said enough in life.
Grief is exhausting. It robs you of sleep, of appetite, of memory. Nightmares steal rest, and the cruelest moment is waking each morning and remembering, all over again, that you are gone.
But grief, like the seasons, shifts. The tides become easier to predict. The crying becomes less constant, and laughter slowly returns between waves of loss. My grief will not shrink, but my life will grow around it. You would have wanted that.
It has now been four years. I fought the “why” until there were no answers left. I raged, I carried guilt, I kept my anger close so I wouldn’t collapse. But now I know: your composition cannot be rewritten. It is what it is. And I accept.
Covid took you. It was senseless. And yet the whole world was grieving too. My grief felt shared, and perhaps that has helped me carry it.
When death and life collide, life goes on. You are with me still, in every sunset, in every act of love, and in every step I take toward peace. But I am here.
Walking with grief
We all know the “grief cycle.” It explains emotions, but it doesn’t explain why grief so often feels lonely. The truth is, grief would not feel so isolating if we understood how it shapes our communication. We push others away without meaning to. They respond awkwardly, or pull back, and the distance grows. We cannot forgive them. We want to. But it is easier to stay angry.
I developed a model that shows this process — how grief affects you, how it affects others, and why both sides can feel misunderstood. When we see this clearly, it becomes easier to break the cycle. There is a way to find support. Grief doesn’t have to be carried alone.
Other Areas of speciality
PND after Infertility
Relationship Counselling
Relationship Counselling
I wrote the foreword to a book called From Fertility Success to Postpartum Mess. It highlights a painful truth: women who go through infertility are expected to feel only gratitude and joy after the birth of their baby. They are not expected to complain, even when they are exhausted, anxious, or overwhelmed.
This silence makes postnatal depression even harder to acknowledge. Yet PND remains one of the most underdiagnosed mental health conditions—and one that can be managed effectively with the right support.
Infertility survivors are expected to feel grateful, not broken. But postnatal depression is real—and treatable.
Relationship Counselling
Relationship Counselling
Relationship Counselling
Don't wait until the question becomes ‘Is this it?’ or ‘This is it’.' Relationship counselling creates the space to talk openly, improve connection, and explore the way forward—whether that means strengthening what you have or making tough decisions with clarity and respect.
Navigating a relationship takes two. It was not meant to be easy but worth it. Let's talk.
Marriage Counselling
Miscarriage and Infant Loss
Miscarriage and Infant Loss
Marriage is not a rehearsal. It’s not the event—it’s everything that comes after. Too often, couples invest more energy in planning the wedding than preparing for the marriage. Marriage counselling is about learning the skills to navigate life together—not preparing for divorce, but building a partnership that lasts.
Miscarriage and Infant Loss
Miscarriage and Infant Loss
Miscarriage and Infant Loss
Losing a baby at any stage of pregnancy, during birth, or even after birth is one of the most heart-wrenching pains to endure. It can feel isolating—like no one truly understands, and sometimes, there are simply no words.
Every loss is unique. Every loss is the greatest loss in the world for the person experiencing it. My role is not to measure pain, but to sit with it, honour it, and help you find a way to hold on when it feels unbearable.
Grief after baby loss is not just a memory. It’s a future re-written. Grief isn’t the past—it’s the future you imagined, undone. It continues, shaping the story we never planned. Grief is a future that didn’t arrive, and a narrative that keeps unfolding. Your grief is not behind you. It walks ahead, rewriting what could have been.
