I've been having a lot of conversations with clinicians lately about money, insurance, and the changing shape of our work.
Underneath so many of these conversations, I hear fear. Fear about insurance clawbacks. About reimbursement rates changing without much explanation. About referrals slowing d...
Recently, I met two therapists socially who were new to me. Both talked about needing to change their practices. They were tired of intensive treatment work and questioning their capacity to keep taking on long-term clients.
The word that stayed with me was pivot.
It’s become such a familiar word...
Hi {{ first_name | default: "there" }},
I've spent a lot of time this month talking about business.
Marketing. Money. Offers. Capacity. The weirdness of being sold seventeen solutions before breakfast. The fantasy versions of ourselves who apparently have unlimited time and beautifully organized ...
Hi {{ first_name | default: "there" }},
There is something slightly ridiculous about writing an email about marketing fatigue during the final week of a launch.
I know.
I am marketing to you right now. More than I usually do. Some of you are probably thinking, "Yes, Hilary. I am aware that EMBER ...
Hi {{ first_name | default: "there" }},
I've spent a lot of my career thinking about what development means.
In helping professions, we tend to measure it by accumulation.
More training.
More credentials.
More techniques.
More expertise.
And all of those things can matter.
But lately I've been ...
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A practitioner I know came to talk with me about how frustrated she has been that her marketing isn't working how she hoped it would.
She had rewritten her website. She had become more consistent on social media. She had updated her directory profiles, asked colleagues for referrals, and tried ...
A few weeks ago, someone came to EMBER office hours with questions about her website.
She had questions about the copy, wasn't sure whether her navigation made sense, and wondered if her homepage was doing enough to explain her work.
We never really talked about her website.
About twenty minutes ...
Hi {{ first_name }},
I've been paying attention to what feels like aliveness lately.
Not what makes me productive. Not what keeps the wheels turning. Not the systems or routines that make it do my work in the world and write here every week.
People sometimes ask what that's actually like, as thou...
There are things I built this year, I could not have described to you last year. Not the shape of it, not the nerve it took, none of it.
Which is to say: the fear was never the thing standing in my way. I used to treat it like a signal to wait. Get it quieter first, then move. Feel ready, then sh...
A lot of my therapist friends can recite Erikson's eight developmental stages from memory. Trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame, all the way out to integrity versus despair. We built entire clinical frameworks on the premise that development isn't linear and we agree that a person is mov...
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I get to talk with a lot of practitioners. In office hours. In coaching sessions. On calls that a pracitioner intends to be about pricing, website choices, or whether to call something a group, a course, or something else entirely.
And underneath almost every conversation, I hear the same quest...
There is a version of my work where I stay moving. Back to back sessions, a full calendar, the rhythm of holding space so constant that it becomes its own kind of anesthesia. I know how to do this. Most of us do. We learned it early in training, in the culture of care, in the particular way helpi...
