Our Therapeutic Approach

Our work is depth-oriented, relational, and deeply human. It is rooted in experiential, attachment and humanistic psychotherapy, and integrates somatic awareness, parts work, imagery, mindfulness, feminist and systemic perspectives, and intuitive ways of knowing.

Together, we slow down and listen to the wisdom of your body, tending to both grief and joy as we make space for what is quietly emerging in your life. Our work may include emotional processing, trauma healing, and reparenting younger parts of the self, and at times, creative, nature-based, and ancestral ways of meaning-making.

Hannah and Jen’s partnership in Ember & Oak holds a wide arc of the human experience, supporting individuals and couples from the threshold of pre-parenthood through postpartum, midlife, and into the deeper, often unnamed and sometimes lonely seasons of aging.

There is a natural generational rhythm between us that we value deeply. It allows us to bring perspective from different life stages while staying rooted in shared presence and care. We have found that connection and wisdom are gathered, woven, layered, and lived into.

Roots, Resistance & Remembering

We respectfully acknowledge that the land on which we work, live, and practice is the traditional, unceded territory of the Monacan Nation. We honor the people, histories, and living traditions connected to this land, and hold gratitude for the opportunity to live and practice here.

At Ember & Oak, we understand healing as more than an individual pursuit.

Many dominant approaches to mental health have historically centered Western, individualistic ideas about wellness, often separating us from our bodies, communities, cultures, ancestors, spirituality, and relationships with the natural world.

Through an anti-oppressive lens, we invite curiosity about the many ways human beings have practiced healing across generations.

We welcome exploring your ancestral ways of healing:

• What were the healing traditions of your ancestors and cultural communities?

• What knowledge, rituals, practices, or ways of gathering were disrupted through colonization, migration, assimilation, or oppression?

• How have systems of power shaped what your family has been encouraged to remember or forget?

• What does healing look like within your cultural context?

• Who and what helped your ancestors endure?

• What forms of connection, ceremony, creativity, spirituality, movement, storytelling, or community have sustained your people?

• What dominant ideas about trauma and healing no longer serve you?

• What would it mean to reclaim your own ways of knowing?