We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lisa-Marie Del Rio. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lisa-Marie below.

Lisa-Marie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

The greatest gift that a parent can bestow upon a child is their own life fully lived. My father has a soft heart and rough hands. And my mother streams tears and laughs from her belly–sometimes simultaneously. They live peacefully in the in between. On the border of light and dark, sameness and evolution, the physical and the spiritual. Comfortable in contradictions, they have found harmony in seemingly opposing forces. They have each lived full lives–in career, in love, in triumph, in failure–and given their children a vivid picture of contentment, a peace in all circumstances. Their fullness has given me the courage, skills, sense of responsibility, and passion to live a life of freedom.

I am the oldest of three daughters. Each uniquely designed. Each of my sisters, born of parents in the in between, have been fully supported in their individual identities. We were never once compared to each other and were encouraged to appreciate the contradictions within, which made us each safe to simply be.

My parents call me “Sugar,” revealing my nature as a creation of multiple compounds combined to birth joy. My middle sister, in her beautiful boldness and brilliant mind, is “Sunshine.” My youngest sister, in her selfless flexibility and pleasant tenderness, is “Sweet.” Each words to support the essence of our spirits and the contents of our hearts–not what we have achieved or what we lack.

My sisters and I are the products of love. And this love, allows us to be–just what we are.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

The nature of my work has evolved in tandem with the evolutions of my spirit. The original focus of my career was in forensic psychology, focusing on the criminal mind, in an attempt to understand the very broken–a reflection of my own psyche. My focus shifted to the psychology of addiction, in an attempt to understand the very empty. Again, a reflection of my own psyche.

And then, when the light came on in side, I made a final shift in practice to the shoring up of women, in an effort to understand the very strong. A reflection of my heart.

As I sat across from my own people, I learned about the heart of a woman. And I fell in love.

Women exist in duality. We walk the border of life and death, the spiritual and the physical, the light and the dark in all circumstances. And, despite influences of conventional medicine, we do not require fixing. We go to therapy to quell the rawness of our emotions, and we have failed to interpret those sensations as the neurological strength of our intuition. We go to doctors to strip of our cycles, when it is our own month-to-month transitions that propel us toward constant evolution.

Woman is a dialetic.

A dialetic, by definition, is the state of two seemingly opposing forces co-existing in harmony. A fearsome thing that can dance freely in the median, in the juxtaposition. She revels in contradiction, because it is in her very cells. And it is the joy of my heart to guide women toward the reality of their spirit, to call forward their unique identities, to make peace with the ways they have been misunderstood, and to greet the wild one within.

There are many psychologists and therapists who are simply healers by the book. They have done the study, gotten the degrees, earned the licensure, and they are effective in their own regard. And then, there are healers by the heart, who have been initiated by facing their own darkness within, traversed the descent, and learned of the ancient ways. And what a gift to be both a healer by the book and a healer of the heart: a woman first and a psychologist second.

The Beautiful Ones who sit across from me, as my sister and my client, will be loving guided by the knowledge in my head and the love in my heart. As we, together, move from glory to glory.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Every human will, one day, receive the call.

You, my dearest reader, may have already been beckoned.

It’s the moment where everything is lost. The rug is pulled out from under you. The tower falls.

For me, it happened in May of 2020, and additional smaller calls have occurred in their various seasons since.

Within a space of two weeks, I lost everything that was feebly supporting my sense of self: the job, the relationship, the family, the hobbies. I was offered an opportunity at reconciliation with myself, and I gave an absolute “yes” to the journey. It was an initiation into a new life, into my true calling where my identity was called forward and destiny was instilled. In the beginning, I did not know what was to come. I certainly did not have a blueprint or a map. But everyday, I was given just enough light to get to the next step. And I never expected that the robustly contented woman I see in the mirror today, with her simple life and her full heart, would be the result of a million tears and a million masks falling to the floor.

Resilience is your adaptive response to adversity. It involves stress-resistant personality traits and the ability to ‘bounce back’ after a blow. And the highest determination of your resilience is the level to which your identity is known and consolidated.

If you know who you are, you will navigate through the feedback from the world and the loss of comforts with ease. Nothing is personal, offensive, or debilitating. It simply is.

And during my own initiation into self, resilience became an unrelenting hunger to see the face of my Creator and to fall in love with my own heart.

And so, I did.

And so, shall you.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A woman’s way is unique.

The feminine spirit is one of surrender, intuition, trust, and freedom. And stepping into that power has been the gift of a lifetime.

I remember the pushing, the achieving, the fighting, the groaning of graduate school, of career, of the relationship that did not support my highest. I remember the days of trying to find my place in man’s world, in man’s heart, in man’s approval.

True healing is the result of surrendering, not straining. And in Hebrew, the word for “surrender” means “to rise above.” It’s an image of releasing all the things that no longer serve you. And in my journey, I pressed into the psychology of woman, her unique neurological structure, the beautiful way in which The Creator designed her. And the chains of masculinity, the shields I carried to protect my tenderness, fell one by one.

I learned about woman’s unique power–as a force of existential evolution and source of loving all beings into perfection. And in the revelation, I never again wanted to be anything but her, but me, but woman, but us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.drlisamariedelrio.com
• Instagram: @drlisamariedelrio

Image Credits
Danielle McVey @daniellemcveyphotography