Sarah Boddy
I worked in schools for 20 years and am now a licensed mental health worker (LCSWA, LCASA). I love dessert, singing with other people, and the joys of resisting the bullshit of our current systems while we create the world we want, in small ways, all the time, together.
Community Therapy
My cozy office is near the corner of State Street and Haywood Road, inside Trinity United Methodist Church in West Asheville, which has dedicated space to community organizations working in the neighborhood. I share the third floor with Asheville Poverty Initiative (which runs 12 Baskets Cafe across the street), Deep Time, Asheville Food and Beverage Union, and Asheville Tenants Union. Appalachian Medical Solidarity and the Mutual Aid Wellness Collective are right across the parking lot. I am connected to these organizations and embedded in the web they form in West Asheville through real, accountable relationships. This is part of what holds me well as a mental health worker, and what allows me to hold others well.
Operating as a community therapist in this way means that clients who wouldn’t otherwise have access to care outside of institutions that have already harmed them can find a smooth and relational path towards it. It means that clients who do have more choices can be met at the intersection of individual healing and social change. Like fresh air that supports lichen, these conditions make something beautiful a little more possible.
