The Road That Led Me Here
I'm Lisa, a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Certified Professional Counselor Supervisor, a former hospital chaplain, and, more than any of those titles, someone who has done her own walk through the dark and come out the other side still curious about being human.
If you're here, you may be somewhere in the middle of your own hard season, trying to make sense of a relationship that quietly rearranged who you are, or carrying the weight of things you've seen and can't quite put down. I'd like to tell you a little about how I got here, because I think it matters that the person sitting across from you has done more than study healing. I've lived a version of it.
I was young, and I was practical. I chose Dental Hygiene the way you'd choose a solid, sensible investment, a clear path, a good outcome, very little risk. Partway into the program, I woke up to myself and realized I had left all emotion and self-connection out of the equation entirely. I hadn't asked myself if I wanted this. I'd only asked if it made sense.
Just because something is practically good doesn't mean it's wholly good.
I decided I wanted to be a pediatrician instead, and I was told to pick a major, any major, whatever pulled at me, and get to med school in four years. I chose Psychology, and it was like opening a set of books filled with treasure. The wonder of the human mind, laid out in careful studies, all the noise stripped away to get down to what actually makes us tick. I was hooked. I had found something that felt like mine.
Looking back now, I can see the setup with more clarity than I had at the time: a young woman thinking with an entirely logical brain, not yet connected to her emotions, her self-awareness, or who she actually was...and so she chose the practical path first. She was just beginning to reconnect with her whole self when she found psychology and let herself dream of medical school.
And at almost exactly that same moment, she was being pulled into a relationship that would ask something very different of her. Not just a pause on her own growth and self-discovery, but something closer to disengaging from herself nearly altogether, in order to survive it. That relationship became a 23-year marriage.
This is, I think, where I first learned, long before I had language for it, what survivors mean when they describe abuse as subtle and cumulative. At first it just feels like normal life stress. Relationships go through phases. But one day you notice you can't fall asleep until you know he's asleep. You notice you sleep better when he's out of town. Your nervous system has been screaming at you for a while, but the slope down into that kind of chronic dysregulation is so gradual, you don't feel yourself descending. You just wake up one day and realize how far down you are.
Chaplaincy, and Learning to Be
Med school stopped making sense once I understood what my family needed from me. But graduate school became a wonderful path at exactly the right moment. I studied at Liberty University, where I was trained in solid psychological theory alongside learning how to ethically integrate psychology and theology, when a client wants that.
I had a dream, back then, of a beautiful office with a water fountain...seeing clients every day, being a steady partner in their healing. Life had a different detour in mind. I ended up at a Level I trauma hospital as a Healthcare Chaplain Resident, learning to bring my counseling training into some of the most terrifying, overwhelming moments a person can face.
I learned to sit with grief and loss in a way I hadn't been taught in any classroom, that some pain doesn't call for words. It calls for presence. That the highest honor, and sometimes the greatest service, we can offer another person is simply to be with them in the dark. To sit. To listen. Even to sit in utter silence.
I also had the honor of doing this sacred work with the B.T.E., the "Best Team Ever." Pictured above is just a few of us, doing the other part of the work, bringing joy, humor, and passion for service to the dark places.
I fell in love with chaplaincy, with the unpredictability of it, with the privilege of it. I had learned plenty of valuable techniques by then, and I used them. But the thing I heard, over and over, was some version of: "Thank you, I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't been there." And all I had actually done was sit. Listen. Be.
One of the most powerful lessons those years taught me: we all need someone willing to be with us in the dark. Not someone rushing to fix it, or explain it away, or move us along to the next feeling on schedule. Just someone willing to stay.
There were plenty of other moments, too, where what people needed was room to talk it through, to explore, uncover, get angry, get sad, get determined to feel better. Those techniques, all the tools in my training, earned their place in those moments. Presence and skill were never in competition. I needed both.
I stayed in chaplaincy far longer than I planned to, through earning my full LPC licensure, through completing my M.Div. (also at Liberty), and through the ending of that 23-year marriage. I came back afterward and was honored to serve as a Department Coordinator and Clinical Supervisor, pouring into other clinicians the same way I'd been poured into.
Chaplaincy also taught me about a particular kind of exhaustion that doesn't always have a name outside of clinical circles: vicarious trauma. The silent scream of seeing, hearing, and smelling things you cannot forget, and having nowhere to put those memories...while still walking into the next room, smiling, and serving the next patient like nothing happened. That kind of weight deserves space. Space to process it, to honor it, to let it move through you instead of settling in and staying.
Founding Life By Design
In 2020, I did a thing I hadn't planned to do yet. I opened Life By Design Counseling, because I felt God telling me it was time, now, not later. I argued back. I didn't have the time to devote to a practice the way I wanted to. I did it anyway.
For a few years, I built the practice alongside my chaplaincy work. In 2025, I felt led to take it a level further and open a brick-and-mortar office. And in February of 2026, I knew it was time to close the door on chaplaincy and give this work my full attention.
Chaplaincy still comes with me into the therapy room, every day. I'm endlessly grateful for the years that shaped me there. Now, I get to walk alongside women recovering from narcissistic abuse and medical trauma, and it's an honor I sometimes still can't quite believe I get to have. I get to be with people in the dark space of recovery, or sometimes, discovery, when they're still trying to name what's happening to them.
I'm not afraid to sit in that dark space with my clients. To acknowledge the pain without rushing to fix it. To validate that "just leaving" is rarely as simple as it sounds from the outside. And to help someone find their way back to their sense of self, their confidence, their inner voice, and their worth.
What I Believe About Healing
What survivors need isn't a promise that the past will be erased. It isn't a snake-oil pitch that triggers will vanish forever once you're "done" with the work. What survivors need is courageous, calm presence, someone who understands the experience without judging it, and who won't be discouraged when what looks like a setback shows up in the middle of the work.
"Setbacks" are usually just healing circling back to pick up another layer of texture. They're expected, not a sign that something's gone wrong.
The healing work is often lifelong. The therapy doesn't have to be. Once you've learned to use the tools, you carry the courage, confidence, and knowledge to move through the different seasons of healing on your own. Some people come back to counseling now and then, as a kind of tune-up when a new season stirs something up. Others just need to reconnect with their tools and their support system when that happens.
I'm here for all of it, and I consider it a true honor to be available to survivors on the long road back to themselves.
How Faith Fits In, If You Want It To
I hold a Master of Divinity, which means I can ethically integrate faith into our work together, but only if, and however, you want that. Plenty of my clients don't, and that's completely okay. This part of the work is never assumed; it's always your call.
For those who do, faith integration might look like closing a session in prayer. It might mean exploring how your trauma has shaken your image of God...questioning how He could let this happen, or sitting with anger and spiritual distress, especially if the harm you experienced happened inside a faith community.
It might mean examining the quiet belief that being afraid somehow means you don't have enough faith. (Spoiler: it doesn't.)
And it might simply mean having a safe, non-judgmental place to say the questions we usually feel too guilty to speak out loud...Am I being punished? What did I do to make God angry with me? How does a good God allow this kind of evil? These questions are safe here. They're welcome here. We'll sit together in the very human reality of having asked them, because most of us, at some point, have.
Outside the Office
I'm a wife, a mother, and a grandmother, part of a big, blended, wonderfully chaotic family. Those relationships have taught me plenty about the real, messy complexity that lives inside family systems, and that understanding shapes how I show up in the room with you.
I'm also, somewhat unexpectedly, a gym rat. I say unexpectedly because it started with real gym anxiety, walking in and feeling entirely out of place. Now it's a few days a week, non-negotiable, because my body tells me it needs it. Even on the days I don't feel like going, there's a specific feeling when I leave...my body exhaling, taking in the fact that it's been cared for. It keeps me living inside a value I want for every client who sits across from me: I am worthy of this care. And life's problems tend to look just a little smaller after what I call my "iron therapy."
I believe in holistic care, not just because it's good clinical practice, but because I've lived it. Bodies heal better when the soul is tended to. Souls heal better when the body gets the care it needs. That's part of why I ask my clients about their sleep, their exercise, their last physical, their medications. I want the whole picture, because collaborative, whole-person care is simply better care.
Outside the Office
I'll Sit With You in This
If any part of my story felt familiar, the slow slope you didn't notice you were on, the exhaustion of holding it together for everyone else, the questions you've been afraid to say out loud, I'd be honored to sit with you in it.
You don't have to have it figured out before you reach out. You don't have to know exactly what you need yet, either. That's part of what we'll find together.
Life By Design Counseling is located in Bolingbroke, Georgia, serving clients throughout Macon, Forsyth, Warner Robins, and the surrounding Middle Georgia communities. Teletherapy is available anywhere in the state of Georgia.
If you're ready to take the next step, I'd love to hear from you.