We make family in so many ways. As a member of the ASRM Mental Health Professionals Group, I can:
Provide individual and couples therapy to attend to grief and loss, manage stress, balance priorities and values, identify and advocate for emotional needs, and contemplate next steps related to unsuccessful pregnancy or conception attempts.
Provide psychoeducational mental health consultation and clinic reports required by fertility clinics to proceed with 3rd party reproductive services (the use of sperm or egg donation, or embryo donation).
Support individuals and couples who hold concerns about how to parent or talk with their children born through donor conception about nuanced topics, such as:
- Disclosure of the use of 3rd party gametes
- Choices related to alternative family building that now affect the child (such as unknown medical histories, or the use of a known or anonymous donor)
- Feelings about accessing or lacking access to relationships with known or unknown genetic relatives
- Large or endlessly growing sibling groups
Support individuals and couples who hold concerns about how to parent or talk with their children who joined their family through adoption about nuanced topics, such as:
- Adoption disclosure
- Creation of social stories to support children in understanding the complex choices and decisions that led to relinquishment in age appropriate, honest and sensitive ways
- Feelings about access or lack of access to birth parents or other genetic relatives.
- Help parents in adjusting to seen or unseen reactions related to the loss or absence of a genetic connection with their children.
- Provide attachment-focused parenting support for management of difficult behaviors arising from early childhood trauma exposure.