COVID-19 Update

As of Monday, March 16, 2020, and until further notice, I will be offering online sessions only. I will be using a simple tele-health portal (www.doxy.me) that does not require clients to download anything. I will provide you with my practice address once we have scheduled via email, phone, or Google Calendar. All that is needed is for you to type this practice address into your browser (Chrome of Firefox will work), and you will appear in my online waiting room. At that time, we can clarify payments and insurance issues, which are straightforward. Let’s stay safe, healthy, and support one another!

Be well,
Stephanie Smith LPC

Meeting Our Building’s Original Family

Today I had the opportunity to meet Ana Nelson’s grand-daughter and great-grandson. Delores and her son Miguel traveled from Ohio to visit with family, and after missing each other a year ago when they last visited, we finally got together at 40 Bolivia Street, where she spent so much time as a child. Ana and her husband built the house in 1920, twenty years after Ana had acquired the land.

As we toured the first floor, she told me where everything had been up until 1943, which was the last time she was in the house. We looked at her grandmother Ana’s photo album, and I was able to see the young bride from Sweden and her husband, the old garage that I had to tear down in 2003, and how the back porch and steps had been built. Some parts of the apartment are unchanged, such as the front room where Delores slept as a child, and where I now have my office. Other places are very different.

We looked across the street at number 39, which is where Delores, her parents and siblings moved in 1937. Perhaps she will be able to see that house another time.

This was such a thrill for me. I love the house, and now I feel a bit more connected to its story. I hope to have some photos sent my way soon, and when that happens, I’ll post them.

Divorce Mediation Training

Stephanie has just completed a forty-hour basic divorce mediation training. This program was led by nationally recognized trainer Carl Schneider, Ph.D., LMFT, and is approved by the Family Section of the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR), the national professional association in the field. New Haven-based CCND (Connecticut Council for Non-Adversarial Divorce) sponsored and hosted the five-day training.

This certificate, in addition to twenty-four hours of Collaborative Divorce training earned over the past two and a half years, qualifies Stephanie for practitioner membership in state and national associations. As a mental health clinician with over twenty years of experience working with individuals, couples and families, she looks forward to assisting divorcing couples with children to co-create a positive working relationship as co-parents to their children.

Couples Institute Training

Stephanie Smith has just returned from two days of training at the Couples Conference 2012, co-sponsered by the Milton H. Erickson Foundation and The Couples Institute. This year’s focus was Attachment, Differentiation & Neuroscience in Couples Therapy, and she participated in workshops by Haville Hendrix, Bill Doherty, Ellen Bader, John Gottman and Scott Woolley.