I’m glad you’re here.
I’m Lauren (she/her), a creative, anti-oppressive, compassionate art therapist and licensed professional counselor in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I specialize in art and trauma therapy with adults who want to connect their healing journey to breaking cycles of oppression. I help motivated adults explore their identities and life experiences to find individual and collective growth.
At Work In Progress Therapy and Wellness, relationship and creativity will be the foundation for our work together.
I’ll hold space for you to be with your feelings and understand the root of your struggles and misalignment. Through collaboration and kindness, we’ll explore and unlearn the systems that impact you. You’re not gonna take ownership of a racist, ableist, harmful system as part of your identity.
You’ll get support in reconnecting with your true self.
About Lauren
I’m committed to unlearning anti-Blackness, supporting the LGBTQ+ community, and de-centering whiteness to live an anti-oppressive life for collective liberation. This shows up in how I provide therapy to how I’m raising my two young white children. I’m forever learning. I’m a work in progress.
I’m aware of and acknowledge the many ways I am privileged by the identities I hold. I’m a white, cis, straight, able-bodied woman in a heterosexual, monogamous marriage living on unceded, stolen Lenni-Lenape territory.
I love painting (the messier the better), healing my inner child through being present in my play and parenting of my two kids, catching up with my friends, eating fancy vegan food, and spending time with my partner watching Marvel. I try to find ways to actively honor my grandparents who have passed on and include them in all that I do. And just so you know, I’ll probably curse in our sessions as evidenced by my 5 year old already knowing how to properly use the word shit.
When I was two, I was diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech, which means it was difficult to speak. Since I did not have the ability to put words to my feelings and thoughts, I turned to art. Art disrupted my world of isolation, silence, frustration, and self-doubt and transformed it into a colorful, expressive, and bold one that connected me to myself and community. Art will always be a part of my healing story and I believe in its power for it to be a part of yours.
About Lauren’s Educational Journey
I received my Master’s Degree in Art Therapy and Counseling from Drexel University in 2013. I’m a Board Certified Art Therapist, a Licensed Professional Counselor in Pennsylvania, and a Licensed Professional Art Therapist in New Jersey.
My master’s education and early clinical work was all very white. White meaning deeply connected to racist, colonial, and western thought and practices. First, I had to gain awareness of how what I loved doing was actually harmful to the people I had the honor of serving. It’s an ongoing process to make active changes in response to what I now know. Traditional therapy practices, which are stolen, empty, and badly reproduced indigenous practices, uphold values and systems that I don’t align with when used unquestioned and unaltered. I’m intentional with who I learn from now.
Art therapy is at the heart of how I approach healing. Shawna Murray Browne’s Liberation-Focused Healing Framework has become the foundation that I was missing from my earlier education. I incorporate values and interventions from trauma informed, emotion focused, feminist, process-oriented, and social justice frameworks.
Through my work with Shawna Murray Browne’s Decolonizing Therapy for Black Folk training (2020) and Therapy That Liberates Intensive (2020-2021), I’ve learned to implement her Liberation-Focused Healing Framework.
My continuing education focuses on creative arts, intersectionality, racial trauma, trauma recovery, and liberation psychology. I’m committed to doing my own work around unlearning whiteness, connecting to my ancestry, and addressing biases. I was mentored by Ariana Lloyd and Kawa Kuller at the start of Work In Progress Therapy and Wellness to ensure it upheld anti-oppressive values from its creation.
Let’s talk! Schedule a free 15 minute call to make sure we’re a good fit and to answer any questions. We’ll briefly discuss your needs and goals of starting therapy and what therapy would look like together.