We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hannah Dudley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hannah, appreciate you joining us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
Ten years into my career as a mental health practitioner and 6 years into a person journey of infertility, I suffered a great loss – I was 5 months pregnant and the week before had just been told “everything is looking good, relax – you’re going to have this baby” – but I woke up really swollen and sought guidance from my medical team. Turns out I was in hypertension crisis, my kidneys were dumping protein, and I was at significant risk of losing my own life. I was suffering from extremely early, sudden, and severe preeclampsia and the only way to stop the trajectory was to get the placenta (what triggers preeclampsia) out of my body – we were forced to make the impossible decision to terminate our deeply desired pregnancy for maternal medical reasons. This was our only viable embryo from our one and only chance at IVF – this was our daughter who had a name and we just saw on the ultrasound was hanging in there despite her mother’s body shutting down around her. And she was too young to survive. We had to say goodbye before we even got to say hello; and on the precipice of being parents (which we had longed to be), we had to face a future of being childless not by choice.
The irony was not lost on me that I’ve specialized in grief & loss since I was in school, finding I had the presence and ability to be with people in some of their most painful days, eventually helping them find hope and integration of this loss into their lives. This experience just deepened my degree of understanding, compassion, and patience for the arduous and complicated journey of grief (and trauma) becoming the new relationships in your life – as we never fully ‘heal’ or complete this journey; it integrates into our life and our very being. There is before and there is after. Not only did this profound experience forever change me, it also forever changed the way I approached my work.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I provide individual, couples, and family therapy services in my private practice based in Denver, Colorado (with the ability to see any Colorado resident via telehealth). My main specialty is grief and loss, trauma, and traumatic grief. I am certified in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), a research-based and proven method for treating trauma. I also love supporting clients explore their pasts in service of increasing their sense of self-worth and confidence in living their lives.
– I think I was primed to be comfortable in the grief & loss space as a result of my parents’ honest and straight-forward approach to death/loss/euthanasia with our pets as I was growing up. Then, it was a grandparent, then it was a friend from high school taken too soon. All of these early experiences set the stage to be drawn to be with others in this life experience that often feels quite isolating.
Further, I love supporting other professionals – whether providing therapy to therapists, professional consultation on topics I specialize in (including EMDR), or clinical supervision as professionals work towards full licensure, supporting professionals develop their best professional selves is an absolute pleasure – and feels like I have more reach in the profession.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
When I was hospitalized with my own loss in early 2019, I was in the process of building a small group practice with other clinicians. I hoped to have a boutique-like setting, where colleagues could find support and community (as private practice can feel isolating), and clients could get multiple needs met within the same trusted practice.
Following my traumatic loss, so much of my life had changed, I had a desire to keep something in my life consistent – so I kept forging ahead with growing the group practice; I didn’t want trauma to change this part of my life, too. Then, exactly 13 months past my life-changing experience, during which I gave as much limited energy and capacity I had to forging ahead with this vision, the world experienced a global trauma of COVID-19. We quickly pivoted to Telehealth, tried to support our clients as best as possible, while I tried to support my employees as best as possible. This included digging in further to building a sense of team despite our remote work for 16 months, rebranding the practice name/look, taking new headshots for the team, and creating a brand new fresh website that launched in early November 2021. However, ALL of this was taking a major toll on me – a toll I did not recognize until I was hit with the truth one evening in late November 2021, just weeks after all this marketing work went live.
The truth was I was a different person than I was prior to February 2019 – and just trying to forge ahead with the same dreams I had as that previous version of myself just didn’t fit anymore. I felt bad… for the clients being served, for my employees that I believe liked working under my umbrella, and also for what felt like an additional loss for my previous self.
But when you know, you know. And I felt it to my bones that this was no longer the direction for me. Being an employer and growing a group involves a lot of moving pieces, a lot of problem solving, and a lot of tackling problems – I used to love that stuff. But my healing, PTSD self needed simplicity, ease, and less responsibility.
I’ve been a solo practitioner since March 2022 and thankfully, my intuition was correct – it has provided me more simplicity, ease, and less responsibility, allowing me more bandwidth to continue to tend to myself as a human.
I also believe this experience of recognizing when an old dream is no longer serving you, and you need to make a significant and impactful change, has helped me relate to more clients who may be facing such situations themselves. I understand on a fundamental level how you can have a vision for your life, and things out of your control can completely change that trajectory (like losing our opportunity to be parents) – and the work is to feel, grieve, and start to identify how you can crush this plan b path you’re on; it takes time, support, courage, and some humor – but it is possible.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
My clients and peers describe me as down-to-earth, authentic, and intuitive. I have cultivated a unique knack at being real, honest, and personable in my connection with clients. Working with me, clients will explore and examine at a profound degree, while knowing they have someone invested in a collaborative approach, and they’ll probably laugh more than expected.
This, along with my extensive training – and personal experience – in traumatic grief, have made me well-suited to supporting others in such unfortunate life circumstances.
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