We were lucky to catch up with Desiree Smith recently and have shared our conversation below.
Desiree, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Have you ever experienced a times when your entire field felt like it was taking a U-Turn?
The mental health landscape is changing rapidly with more and more inclusion of holistic and creative models gaining acceptance and inclusion. This has been such a breath of fresh air for me because I have always included this in my work with trauma. If was difficult to leave this aspect out when working with clients because spirituality and art are such an important part of the healing process. In addition to that, we are seeing so many clinical trials and studies that support psycadelic assisted therapies. A practice that I believe will heal so many. I created a nonprofit last year that advocates for a whole person approach to mental health with a specific focus on the veteran population. The efforts made in California and Oregon in regards to that has really been beneficial in our efforts to raise awareness around the benefits of sacred plant medicine and I’m so grateful for that. It has enabled us to meet with Virginia elected officials and constituents of Veterans Affairs to discuss research, training and expansion.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Prior to my clinical work, I was a licensed massage therapist. I left my private massage practice to join the Navy in 2008 and completed two back to back deployments shortly after joining.
This experience was bittersweet as I was challenged but, also was deeply wounded from being away from sons who were both under the age of five at that time.
As painful as that was, it was through my darkest hour that I found my calling. I knew that my life’s work would be trauma recovery.
Through my own struggles during deployment, I began to study in great detail depression, anxiety, attachment disorder, complex and post traumatic stress disorder and chronic stress.
I be became fully immersed in the process of advanced clinical training. I learned EMDR, internal family systems, dialectical behavioral therapy, clinical hypnotherapy and too many more to mention.
While that was all incredibly important to myself and my clients, I found that what truly strengthened my work was combining those skills with a return to nature, spirituality and creativity. All of which I had left in my childhood.
When I incorporated those components, I began to divinely channel ideas. I created a series of adult inner children books, which I recently published to help people connect with their negative childhood core beliefs. I began to write music and record music, which was some thing that I hadn’t done for years.
I began to garden, and this quickly lead to a small farm. I have chickens, goats, and honeybees.
Needless to say, my transformation, coupled with my clinical training led me to to form the Hazel Gray Foundation.
My purpose and path is to create change in the current medical mental health model into a bio-psychosocial-spiritual approach. Our current system often overlooks and dismisses these aspects which are at the core—our birthright. We need to look to our ancestral beginnings, back to our roots before modern medicine and pharmaceuticals became the norm. At the very least, we hope to advocate on the ways to effectively combine modern medicine with holistic practices because sometimes it’s not necessarily a clinical issue but, rather a spiritual one and vice versa.
How’d you meet your business partner?
The women that started this venture can all be summed up as divine encounters. My Chief Operating Officer Maddelin Hamm was my sponsor at my very first Navy command after A-school.
We knew immediately that our connection was very different. In fact, we inadvertently planted this seed in 2009 when our conversations expanded to topics around spirituality and mental health. Fast forward to 2021, marriages, hardships and challenges later, we both are in the space required to fully realize this dream that we only discussed briefly one day as hopeful junior Sailors.
That story is not reserved to only Maddelin. All of the OGs on the board of directors share a sense of magical chance encounter when I first met them. Eunhwa Dill met me when I was working as a bartender in my early 20s.
This was time in my life before I became a mother. I was a very different person then, reckless would be the best way to describe it! Several years later, we both became massage therapists which reinforced that our connection was based on our innate desire to be healers we despite not having fully understood or developed those experiences yet.
The rest of the team; Pamela Cox, Amy Duvall and Brianna Scanlon were all on deployment with me when I was at my lowest. They were my respite. Susan, our director of mental health was my clinical supervisor and in many ways, is the very reason I found the confidence to live boldly. I dedicated my first book to her.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
The only words of wisdom I can share about managing or building a team would be to align with people that you felt an intrinsic connection to upon first meeting. People that you intuitively sense an energetic “knowing” of them on a spiritual level. With this connection, you will recognize that your values mesh and there will be no need to constantly express your boundaries.
This is so incredibly important when choosing business partners. Values and boundaries are the core of emotional maturity and living life fully as your authentic self. These people will honor that and you will “knowingly and effortlessly” reciprocate.
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