she/her
Clinical Social Work Associate
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Laurel strives to offer welcoming, accepting spaces for children, adolescents, individual adults, and families to explore what’s feeling tricky right now as well as what’s most important to them. Her approach is grounded in curiosity, collaboration, and profound reverence for the wonder and possibility of change. She holds a deep, enduring trust in the strength, courage, and resilience of the folx she works with, as well as their ability to access their own inherent wisdom. She approaches her work through a relationship-based, anti-oppressive, neurodivergent-affirming, trauma-informed lens with a focus on attachment, psychophysiological regulation, mindfulness, and self-compassion. Laurel draws on modalities that include Child-Centered Play Therapy, Dr. Ross Greene’s Collaborative & Proactive Solutions approach, Person-Centered Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Emotionally-Focused Therapy to support clients.
Laurel has worked with children and families for more than two decades. Prior to Family Roots, Laurel facilitated RIE® parent-child classes (birth-3), and worked as an early childhood consultant and adjunct instructor in the ECE department at Mt. Hood Community College. She brings additional experience as a caregiving professional, toddler and preschool educator, and as a home-visiting social worker. She studied Family Studies and Human Development at the University of Arizona and earned her Master’s degree in Social Welfare with a concentration in direct practice in child and family services at the University of California, Berkeley.
Laurel has advanced training in Magda Gerber’s Educaring® Approach to respectful infant and toddler care and has been a RIE® Associate since 2023. Laurel has studied with child psychologist Dr. Lawrence Cohen and is a certified Playful Parenting leader. Additionally, Laurel has trained with Dr. Stuart Shanker’s The MEHRIT Centre in Self-Reg® in Early Childhood Development. Laurel has also received advanced training from Postpartum Support International and is a Practicing Self-Compassion Therapist.
In addition to her work at Family Roots, Laurel currently facilitates a long-running online RIE® Parent Guidance group for parents of kiddos birth to five. She likes to spend her free time exploring the incredible wild spaces of the Pacific Northwest, sewing (especially mending), cooking, practicing meditation, snuggling with her pup, relaxing in a hammock with a good book, and watching adventure films.
