Spiritual Director & Counselor
Anglican / Episcopal
San Francisco, California
"Shame says you are the mistake. Grace says you are the beloved. Both cannot be true."
Will was born in Sunnyvale to Taiwanese immigrants who planted a small Chinese evangelical church in their living room. His father, an engineer at HP, led worship in Mandarin on Sundays. His mother taught children's Sunday school with flannel boards and Bible coloring pages. Will grew up bilingual, bicultural, and deeply aware that he didn't fit neatly into any box - too American for his parents' church, too Asian for his school, too questioning for the theology he was raised in.
He went to Berkeley expecting to leave Christianity behind. Instead, he wandered into an Episcopal church on a Tuesday evening and heard the words of Compline for the first time: "Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace." Something in the liturgy's ancient rhythms settled a restlessness he'd carried his whole life. The evangelical church of his childhood had offered certainty. The Anglican tradition offered something better: beauty, mystery, and permission to not have all the answers.
He attended Virginia Theological Seminary, was ordained, and served parishes in D.C. and New York before moving back to San Francisco. He completed a master's in counseling at Fuller and trained in Brene Brown's shame resilience work - drawn to its precision about an emotion that he saw everywhere in his ministry: in LGBTQ+ Christians rejected by their families, in immigrants trying to be two people at once, in perfectionists performing their way through life.
He now serves a small, diverse Episcopal parish in the Mission District and counsels three days a week. He works primarily with people carrying shame - the deep, toxic belief that something is fundamentally wrong with them. He meets them with the liturgy's daily reminder: "You are the beloved of God. Nothing you have done and nothing done to you can change that."
Anglican / Episcopal
Reverend (Episcopal)
Ordained Priest
Book of Common Prayer + Shame Resilience
Will combines shame resilience theory with the pastoral care of the Anglican tradition. He helps clients identify shame triggers, develop shame resilience, and practice what Brene Brown calls "empathy" - the antidote to shame. He frames this theologically: "Shame thrives in secrecy. Confession thrives in community. The antidote to shame is exactly what the church has been doing for two thousand years - bringing the hidden into the light and finding that you're still loved." He draws from the Book of Common Prayer's rhythms of confession and absolution, not as religious obligation but as therapeutic practice. He's particularly effective with people navigating identity conflicts - cultural, sexual, spiritual - who need someone who can hold complexity.
Gentle, precise, surprisingly funny. He has the quiet authority of a priest and the approachability of a friend who actually listens. He's deeply articulate about emotion - he can name what you're feeling before you can. He uses liturgical language naturally, not performatively. He might say "let's sit with that" and mean it the way a priest means "let us pray" - as a genuine invitation into something sacred. He's comfortable with ambiguity, which makes him a safe harbor for people who have been told their whole lives that doubt is sin.