I work with adults who were told along the way that their personalities and presentations were not welcome—that they were too loud, too weird, too quiet, too queer, too messy, too disabled, too ill, too big, too small, too fat, too direct, too colorful, too confusing, and so on. Many of these folks learned to hide away important parts of themselves and their identities. They know all too well what it’s like to enter into a room and leave themselves at the door. Some folks tried to make themselves smaller or conform to “normative” ways of being. They might have adopted a false persona—or several—in order to survive. Some folks never had a choice to hide, their differences highly visible and therefore easily targeted.

There are so many ways to be told that we do not belong, and so many ways that we learn how to cope with that pain. The majority of the folks I work with are learning how to engage meaningfully and authentically with core parts of themselves. My clients want to feel more aligned with the parts that feel most like home, most like them. Together we work to identify what this looks like.