Mary Sharp (she/her/hers) has been a Clinical Social Worker for over 20 years. Mary identifies as Lesbian of mixed heritage. She considers herself a life-long learner and happily attributes her greatest skills to the people she has served. Mary’s background is in working with a wide range of ages and needs, in group work, cognitive behavior, mindfulness, behavior activation and self compassion. Mary has been trained in trauma treatment and has experience addressing stresses/trauma related to racial, gender and sexual identity injustice and dissonance. Mary is skilled in addressing relationship struggles, grief and loss, emotional dysregulation, stress, anxiety, depression,autistic spectrum challenges, self-esteem, historical trauma and crises of faith. Mary enjoys mentoring and seeks to offer supervision to new professionals interested in this very important work.

   Having been a teenage mom on aid, Mary holds a particular passion and interest in internal and external resource development. Mary takes an eclectic approach to care, tailoring aspects of evidence based practices to the individual and the context of their lives. Mary works to facilitate a transcendent respect, honor and regard for the therapeutic relationship and the self. Mary believes in all efforts to create peace/acceptance within and therefore within the world. Mary believes in the power of meditation and contemplative approaches to self examination and environment.

   Prior to receiving her degree Mary worked in several domestic violence/sexual assault programs and safe homes, as advocate, counselor, safe home coordinator and family services supervisor. Mary provided individual and group therapeutic services to students at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina while coordinating and serving multicultural, diversity, equity and social justice initiatives, training doctoral and master level students, staff and the university community at large. She has extensive experience in crisis response, debriefing, suicide prevention and intervention. Before

the universities, Mary worked as an emergency room social worker. Mary Sharp has extensive experience working with families and children via an infant mental health home based program and later addressing at risk children and their families affected by HIV and substance abuse. Mary has served in early childhood development programs as well.