Leigh Shaw, MSW, LICSW

I have my own story of building resilience in the bedrock of challenging circumstance and it’s allowed me to walk alongside people with resonance, compassionate humor, and shared experience. 

 

I started in the arts - a theatre kid - it was a place of refuge and empowerment as I grew up. It was somewhere I could explore other ways of being in the world, safely. Writing, performing and teaching brought me into contact with the transformative nature of story on such a powerful level. Along the path, at a time when grief was teaching me her many lessons, I also found mindfulness, meditation and yoga that helped reunite me with my body. I realized I wanted to be a part of not only making art and communicating these incredible stories of resilience and common humanity - but I also wanted to be in the world helping those stories of embodied empowerment come into being for others.

 

As a creative person, activism and questioning the status quo is a part of the work I think we all need to find our own way to wholeness and joy. My work is activist-therapist in nature. If questioning the inequitable structures that reinforce harm via capitalism, classism, racism, sexism and sexual identity discrimination is not an arena of interest for you, we may not be the right fit for working together. I don’t know how we heal ourselves without addressing and freeing ourselves from the toxicity of systems of oppression and dominance in our culture, our families, in relation to nature, and in our own bodies. I am honored to also provide safe and affirming care for the LGBTQIA+ community and to support alternative lifestyle and relationship structures in my practice. 

 

My Approach : 

 

• Trauma-Informed Lens and an Anti-Oppression Orientation

• Health at Every Size and Body Liberation Values 

• Mindfulness, Breath and Body Awareness skills

• Parts Work (facilitating creative dialogue between different aspects of ourselves)

• Creativity and Play

• Strengths-Based Focus

 

From the creative work of making art to a Masters in Social Work with a focus on mental health here in the beautiful PNW, I was determined to forge a creative pathway for curiosity and healing to be a part of my everyday - and here I am as a therapist, an artist, a lover of living.

 

You will find me often on a hike, cuddling my fur baby, at an art market, spending time enjoying my friends or making creative mischief of my own.