We were lucky to catch up with Elaine Dove recently and have shared our conversation below.

Elaine , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

I actually didn’t “plan” to start my own business, and that’s why I feel sharing what DID happen that led to that is important, especially in these times.

After a lifetime of being an artist and scraping by, it was a huge decision to decide to go to graduate school to attain a counseling degree. As someone who grew up in poverty, I already knew that for someone like me – a non white woman who didn’t come from affluence – my only road to changing social class was education that would allow me to work independently in a field I cared about : healing.

I was also really looking forward to (I thought) being in a profession where I’d get a regular paycheck and work for someone else. So I studied for and took the GRE, applied to school, borrowed a ton of money and spent the next 5 years getting through the program.

I was so excited to graduate! However: I graduated with my master’s degree in the middle of the 2009 economic crash. There were NO jobs at all available in my field for those of us who were new graduates, and the attention on the mental health of America was not what it is now.

I quickly realized I had two choices: I could either figure out how to recruit my own clients or I could give up all the work and effort I had put into attaining my master’s degree and just try to find a job in an unrelated field.

I knew that the first option was going to be ridiculously hard given the state of the economy.However, I was passionate about the need for mental health and, even back then, I knew I had specialized experience that other people in my field generally didn’t have (and quite frankly still don’t in 2022). I knew about multiculturalism, feminist issues, mixed race clients, trauma, and somatic methodologies. I felt that even in a mental health climate that, at that time, had little interest in any of these topics, I had a lot to offer.

So, I began outreach to those populations. I rented a tiny office under one of my supervisors and scraped by for three years of internship. 14 years later, I’m still here. Now, the skills I have are in incredibly high demand in my field, as there is a massive shortage of mental health workers with my skill set. My perseverance and faith in what I had to bring to the field and to others has won out over time and continues to grow.

What I would say to young professionals is this:

Really take the time to examine your field and see what your UNIQUE gifts and talents are within it. Are there areas of need that your field is not addressing or maybe doesn’t even know about? In my own case, I knew that Texas was going to become more and more multicultural as time went by and that the need for therapists with this kind of competency would explode at some point – and now, in 2022, we’re here.

Look at demographic information for the area you want to work in, both in terms of your field and geographically. What are the predictions for your chosen area? Who ISN’T being served that will emerge as an important population in 5, 10, 15 years? Gain those competencies and skills. Be forward thinking and observant. This will set you up to grow as your business grows.

Elaine, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

At heart I am simply an artist. I’ve always been a creator. On the outside, I carry a few different “labels.” Shamanic healer, Feldenkrais teacher, mentor, and trauma therapist. I specialize in trauma and PTSD, multicultural and mixed race people, feminist therapy, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ folks, people in “alternative” lifestyles.

I also mentor many up and coming women in politics and business, with a particular emphasis on advancing women of color and LGBTQIA+ people into positions of authority and visibility.

As a lifetime dancer and Feldenkrais teacher, I have decades of experience teaching people how to be in their bodies with greater comfort as well as discovering art and self-expression. We live in a body that has so much capacity for feeling, love, transcendence and creation, even in these difficult times. I can help people find that.

Essentially, I am a multicultural person, and a multicultural healer. I move in many different worlds and have family and friends on four continents. I am always weaving a tapestry of growth, knowledge and healing for my students, clients, and mentees. It is my life’s work and my passion.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

I have always been a healer, teacher, and artist. All that has happened over the years is that I have accumulated more potent training in how to be better in each of these areas. I am very fortunate in that who I am and what I do for a living come from the same place, so there is not much sense of a difference between “work” and “life” for me. So yes, I would choose it all again.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

COVID-19 has been the biggest pivot of my career to date. Everyone in my field had to learn how to do everything differently practically overnight and to figure it out as we went along hoping it would work.

I remember wondering if telehealth would really work – if people would actually receive the benefit of mental health and movement teaching through Zoom, and worrying that they wouldn’t. I was already working in a space that was easy to make much safer to prevent COVID transmission, but figuring out the protocols around masks, vaccinations, and where my own tolerances were for those things was a real process. I’m happy to report that as of September 2022 I have not, and as far as I know my clients have not, experienced any COVID-19 transmission through any visits that have ever been made to my office, and I’m extremely proud of that.

We’re also faced with many new issues because of the pandemic. Overall people’s mental health is far worse. I see a lot more addiction, a ton of depression and PTSD, and a lot more isolation and loneliness than I did before the pandemic. I also find that people ask a lot more existential/spiritual questions as part of healing work. Why are we all here? What are we doing as a species? How can we find meaning or create goodness when things seem to be declining?

It has been a huge challenge and continues to be – and I continue to rise to it because the way I see it, we’re here, and it ain’t over yet. I’m here to keep teaching, to keep healing, to keep leading, to keep figuring it out together.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://dovehealingarts.org/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/dove_healing_arts?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=