Hello! I’m Rachel [she/her].

I am the Associate Clinical Director here at Growing Well Counseling and a Licensed Professional Counselor Associate (LPCA) who followed the calling to a specialty in perinatal mental health. I am passionate about working with women and birthing people who are looking to reclaim their identities - their all-inclusive, holistic selves - as they navigate the emotional stress and complications of growing a family. 

As a perinatal therapist, my goal is to champion the journey that guides a mother to her own wellness, self-love, and fulfillment. I believe in honoring the hard stuff and holding space for the messiness of the human experience.

Adjustment during this stage of life means more than, “getting back to who I was.” Sometimes that looks like taking the hands of our former selves, guiding them to the here and now, and building a relationship between our past and present selves so that our future can be paved with compassion and acceptance.
Other times, the battle is saturated in grief - the societal secret around growing a family. For some, it’s loss of pregnancy or the hoped-for family constellation. For others, it’s loss that exists in the non-linear path toward parenthood. Grief looks and feels different to each family and individual. The same is true for support. 
A perinatal therapist is a sense-of-self advocate, a walk-beside-you listener, a holding-space collaborator, a solution-focused travel companion, and so much more. 

My relationship to the counseling field has always been at the core of how I move through this world. An intentional blank canvas to process through life's adversities and joy? Sign me up! Then, midway through my graduate program studying Clinical Mental Health Counseling, I decided to toss in another life goal: starting a family. I was introduced to perinatal counseling through my own experiences with early pregnancy loss and later with postpartum depression and difficulty adjusting. As a first-time mother in May of 2020, I was tasked with protecting and nourishing a newborn while headlines spouted “unprecedented times,” “social distancing,” and “novel virus” on repeat. Life as a new parent was already an unprecedented journey; it just so happened that the world was asking the same question on a different scale: “What now?”

The pandemic amplified an isolation that existed in the postpartum sphere long before social distancing. I am grateful that perinatal therapy was there to support me and am committed to advocating for and supporting women throughout this chapter.

I leaned into the perinatal specialty under a perfect storm of personal experience, clinical training, and overall passion for women’s health. I became a volunteer Support Coordinator with Postpartum Support International’s (PSI) CT Chapter and later completed the PSI Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders training.   

My ideal client…

might be a growth-seeker, a weary traveler in search of balance, wellness, and their truest self; an inquisitive soul with questions like: Can you help me without judgment? Can you normalize the stuff that doesn’t look and feel the way social media told me it would? Am I ever going to feel like myself again? How do I get to the other side of this? What if…? What if…? What if…?
Whether you are an individual suffering from grief and loss, infertility, postpartum depression/anxiety, or are having difficulty adjusting - the question remains the same: How can we work together to help you protect, love, and nourish your authentic self during this life change? The short version: You deserve to feel well and whole. You are worthy, just as you are, with all the surprises, joy, and disappointment that accompany this phase of life. And you deserve support on that journey.

A therapist and… 

An avid list-maker, a stationery connoisseur, and a dedicated memory keeper. I live in Central Connecticut with my husband and our two sons. When I'm claiming some "me time," you can usually find me crafting and when the family's in tow, you can usually find us venturing near the mountains or heading toward the ocean!

Rachel offers care via telehealth and in person in our Tolland home office.  Fill out our New Client Inquiry form to get started today.