Founder she/her/ella

Healer’s Choice was a dream born out of heartbreak, disillusionment and a hope that we can create systems that do not sacrifice helpers in our mission of serving others. As an educator, I was frequently reminded of the popular metaphor that depicts teachers as candles, lighting the way for others. The problem with this metaphor is that a candle allows itself to be consumed and ultimately destroyed by the means it uses to provide light. Unfortunately, this symbolic pattern was also something I found to be true and commonplace across 3 distinct helping careers that I have held throughout my lifetime. As a former certified nurse aid providing in-home care, high school Spanish teacher and licensed professional counselor, I have been exposed to diverse work settings across helping professions that were plagued by strikingly similar maladies: high staff turnover, exploitation, burnout and compassion fatigue. I have witnessed countless helpers who started careers as inspired, passionate individuals become dissatisfied, disillusioned and eventually detached from their work due to the workings of the very same systems that once brought them hope for change.

Healer’s Choice is about changing the way we view and support helping professionals so that they can create thriving, sustainable practices that contribute to both their own and others’ wellness. The interruption of the harmful cycle most healers find themselves in involves dismantling another popular metaphor: the idea that being a helper is to be a superhero on the front lines of the war for humanity. While this image was designed to instill courage, admiration and pride in the healers of our communities, it is also one that has contributed to the willful ignorance of the very human needs that helpers have which only enables this toxic cycle to continue. While many helpers do work on a daily basis that is truly heroic, they are not the indestructible, invincible characters that we see in our favorite Marvel and DC films. They are unmistakably human, and this vulnerability contributes to their capacity to serve others in ways our favorite heroes from comics never could. Their strength does not come from the inability to feel pain, in fact the opposite, many helpers’ incredible sense of compassion and fortitude is born from their ability to feel pain so intensely they were called to become agents of change and convert this pain into healing energy. This level of alchemy requires helpers to reflect and responsibly heal from their own and others’ experiences so that they can practice vulnerably and connect to others in pain.

We must acknowledge that healers and helpers of all varieties have unique professional needs because the work they do is equally unique. Helpers put so much of themselves, their hearts and their identities into their careers that for them to not have the education or power to make business and financial decisions about how healing services are provided is a recipe for exploitation and resentment. We must create professional environments that intentionally cultivate wellness for healers and help them to develop strong professional identities and confidence in their field. This type of education, support and autonomy is crucial to the development of empowered healers.

To me a healer is someone that promotes the wellness of the self and others. My healing philosophy is deeply integrative, informal and storied in nature.

Integrative: My approach to healing is a patchwork-quilt of knowledge and experience that incorporates my own lived experience in the U.S. and abroad, formal university education and the stories of thousands of individuals I have interacted with across 3 helping professions.

Informal: I intentionally utilize an informal approach to break down power dynamics and barriers between myself and those that I am helping. The core of my practice is rooted in authenticity, humor and a sprinkling of profanity.

Storied: I have always been passionate about the healing power of stories: whether we are learning from the wisdom of others or learning to tell our own. From narrative therapy to the healing pockets of nerd culture, I have always been and will always be #hereforthestory.

Founder they/them/theirs

My mother asked me about Healer’s Choice, and my contributions, and wondered why I wanted to take on such a project. The most authentic response I had remains the most accurate: when you see someone drowning, do you stop and negotiate or do you throw them a life ring?

I see Healer’s Choice as the life ring that we’re extending to so many healers looking for support and help to launch their practices and work toward financial stability. I get to do so many things that I enjoy, including research and creative problem solving, and actually help others with that work without having one-on-one therapy sessions with them. I had collected so much information in a document about starting a private practice, and made mistakes as I went along, and I realized this could be more than a semi-therapeutic venting into the void; I could share the document and it would support others and save them time and money.

The idea that I could co-create something that gave people that freedom to actually work authentically for themselves drove me toward Healer’s Choice. I remember my experiences working for others, and the way in which I felt like I had to be a martyr because focusing on money was “wrong,” that somehow because my work is helping others I should be able to pay my student loans with warm fuzzy feelings, and buy my dog food with gratitude from folks I work with in therapy. I got to the point toward the end of my employment from others that I dreaded opening my email, and jumped every time my work phone went off. I was so over narcissistic people having the reins and deciding what was good for them had to be good for everyone else. It truly felt like an abusive environment that I needed to escape, and it is quite the sign that something is systematically wrong, that it was expected I would just be able to accept losses in the thousands due to underpayment or an overly complex formula that was never transparent so I couldn’t even accurately calculate my paycheck.

While it is likely not surprising to people that know me, I know that I do not take well to being told what to do in most scenarios. The only situation I could imagine for myself to escape the friction of being told what to do was to open my own practice and be my own boss. And with that decision, a weight for my future lifted from my shoulders. Knowing that I could focus on my healing work, and would be able to control every aspect of my business gave me so much more emotional capacity.

It struck me that something was truly different when in the middle of a weekday I had a large chunk of time in my schedule open, I decided I’d take my dog for a walk. I didn’t have to feel worried that I wasn’t at my desk to be constantly available, or trying to find ‘work’ to do to ‘earn’ my paycheck. I just put on my sneakers and put my dog in his harness and we went and enjoyed ourselves, because I set my expectations for myself and my practice, and that included knowing that I was not going to be glued to my devices.

Knowing I felt so many avenues of relief, in addition to commiserating with other healers about all the stressors, I realized that I surely was not the only one wrestling with this. And I could actually do something about it for others.

My strategy in regard to healing is something like a combination of two famous Rogers. Mister Rogers once said “look for the helpers,” and Carl Rogers formed a whole therapy theory around the idea that people are experts on themselves, and the therapist needs to take a non-directive, compassionate stance and help the person in therapy discover their own solutions. Putting these Rogers together, I would describe my philosophy as everyone can be their own helper, and my role as a healer is to help the person in therapy develop their own healing voice.

As a healer, I’m authentic and humorous; I trust that ultimately I don’t have to have the right answer or know how to do everything, I just have to remain curious and open. I can be honest and as human as the person I’m working with.

Founder they/he

Something that I learned in my Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) program buried itself into my bones - agency and empowerment are born from the ability to make choices for oneself, and that the way we treat ourselves, and those we share this profession with, directly impacts those we support in healing.

Through my time working in community mental health and non-profit organizations, I saw the same problems over and over. Exploitation of workers. Shitty environments for People of the Global Majority and Queer folks. Perpetuation of martyrdom complex. Colleagues constantly suffering from capitalism fatigue and vicarious trauma. The story that there just isn’t enough money out there for healers to be paid fairly. And the most difficult thing - Organizational power dynamics under the guise of social justice that actually reflected the same Imperialist drive for power and control that creates and feeds both structural, and interpersonal, oppression and abuse. It became clear to me that I had to GET OUT in order to be the healer I envisioned myself wanting to be.

But funny enough, nothing in my schooling or training taught me how to get out. Suddenly, I was out here on my own trying to create my own business, and the way I managed to do it is (1) A fire inside me knew without a doubt that it had to be possible to have a sustainable career doing this work and (2) a colleague helped show me the way.

I realized that there’s a reason why most therapists don’t learn how to create their own business - the Mental Health Industrial Complex depends on us lacking that knowledge, confidence, and ability so that it can retain its force and power over both us and the people we support.

What would happen if more healers had choice and agency over their work? What would happen if through that choice and agency, healers could better care for themselves and each other? For me, it’s resulted in living a life more aligned with my values, where I am paid well to show up to work confidently as my true self. Where everyday I feel enlivened knowing that the way I am thriving in this profession is political as fuck. I started Healer’s Choice because I wanna see the Mental Health Industrial Complex crumble and something better built in its place. I wanna see what happens when more healers are empowered to believe that we can create something better for ourselves, the people we support, and the communities we live in. I wanna help other healers connect with their own fire, and be a light to show them the way out and forward.

I’m a somatic therapist with a face tattoo who believes everyone has an Inner Healer inside of them, they just need to feel supported, contained, and safe enough to access it. I believe that the expert on you is you, and that therapy is better when it’s combined with other healing strategies to help you find the way back home to yourself. I recognize that what we struggle with collectively often harmfully termed “mental Illness” is actually expressions of wounds that are both ours and our ancestors’, as well as deeply intelligent and adaptive responses to shit we or our ancestors have been through in the past or have to deal with on a daily basis. It’s not just a mental thing, it’s a body, mind, soul thing, which is why my practice centers embodiment. To me, in a society that requires separation from self and others to uphold oppressive systems, coming back to one’s body in connection with others is a deeply political act.