About Me -
The Horseshoe Counsellor
Hi, I’m Tracey - the founder of The Horseshoe Counsellor, a private counselling practice supporting individuals through life’s challenges and transitions.
I believe the power to choose, to change unhelpful habits and thinking patterns, and to shape the direction of your own life already exists within you. As a counsellor, my role is to walk alongside you as you uncover your own answers, your own strengths, your own self-belief, and your own way forward. Everything below is the story of how my life led me to asking these questions, and to doing this work.
My Story…
My earlier years were grounded in competitive tennis: after four years on the women’s tennis team at Duke University, I played professionally, spent years travelling internationally on tour, and learned early what it takes to keep showing up under pressure, in unfamiliar places, trusting myself even when the answers weren’t obvious. That kind of life teaches you a lot about resilience, self belief, preparation, discipline, and what genuine support looks like when things get hard - lessons that translate directly into the client-counsellor relationship.
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Along the way, I've also navigated my own share of adversity. That story has become a powerful force in my life — a constant source of fuel that keeps driving me forward. I believe the knowledge I have gained through it is a privilege, and one I now carry forward as a responsibility to act on. It's given me a deep, human understanding from the inside out—of what it takes to move through something difficult, and it is why I am able to walk alongside others as they find their own way through.
These days you'll likely find me out in a paddock spending time around horses. There's something about the quiet, present company of animals and time spent outdoors, that has shaped how I think about recovery, healing and growth: it can happen in many ways beyond talking alone, and safety and trust are built slowly, in small honest moments.
It's also where the name of my practice comes from. A horseshoe has long carried meanings of protection, strength, and moving forward — it's the thing that lets a horse carry weight safely across whatever ground is ahead of it. And a horseshoe doesn't start out that way. It begins as a straight, unremarkable piece of iron, and it's the blacksmith's skilled use of fire that reshapes it - bending it, through heat and pressure, into something purposeful and strong. I think counselling works in a similar way. With the right support, the pressures and hard seasons of a person's life can become the very thing that shapes new strength, skills, and self-understanding — tools a person carries forward into their own life. That's the work I want to do alongside my clients: supporting them to use their own fire, strength, and motivation to forge what carries them forward.
As a registered counsellor, and registered member of the Australian Counselling Association, my approach is collaborative and draws on person centred counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy(CBT), and attachment-informed and developmental frameworks tailored to what each client needs. I work particularly with:
Grief and loss
Interpersonal relationships and communication
Life transitions and adjustments
Anxiety and emotional regulation
Building safety, trust, and self understanding
Alongside individual counselling, I am also involved in providing outdoor, farm-based, animal assisted activities and small group experiences that bring people into connection with nature and animals as a complement to more traditional talk based work. These services are offered as a separate program, run alongside my counselling practice, and are experiences designed to offer a grounding, embodied way to build connection, ease stress and anxiety, and develop confidence and calm—often opening up places that sit beyond conversation alone.
Thank you for being here. It would be my privilege and honour to support you as you find your way forward.
