Meet Melissa Baird, MS

(she/her)

Specialties: Trauma/Complex Trauma, Spiritual Exploration and Spiritual/Religious Deconstruction/Reconstruction, Religious Trauma, Parenting Stress, especially parenting of children with unique emotional and behavioral needs, Grief & Loss, IFS Therapy, EMDR Therapy

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Melissa Baird (she/her) graduated from a master’s degree program that integrates spirituality with mental health counseling. A former elementary school teacher in the Chicago public school system, she transitioned to full-time parenting 19 years ago. Melissa brings a wealth of life experience as well as deep spiritual formation within contemplative and mystical traditions. She is drawn to counseling because of her personal experience of healing and transformation in spaces where she was welcomed to say the unsayable.

Melissa is also trained as a spiritual director and brings deep listening and non-judgmental acceptance to the sacred space of therapy sessions. She begins with the foundation that every person is enough, as they are in the present moment. This reality often gets buried by life experiences including shame, trauma, loss, and anxiety. As a therapist she creates and provides a safe space in which clients can tenderly and compassionately begin to uncover all that is keeping them from accessing and living from their most authentic self. Through client-centered, trauma-informed care, she works with each client as an unique individual to explore and implement a healing path forward. She uses EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and humanistic and existential approaches to help clients access their own inner knowing and innate ability to heal.

“Frederick Buechner says, ‘Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.’ I am privileged to serve as a therapist, in the role of companion and guide, as you navigate the beauty and terror of your own lived experience with freedom and in a way that reflects your inherent belovedness.”