Rachel Cohen, MA, LPC

I was born and raised in New Jersey, whose culture gifted me candor, authenticity, and the ability to hold my own. My clients know well that it's very difficult to shock or offend me, and I bring a refreshing down-to-earth energy to my work. In my adolescence, my family moved to Tennessee, which was certainly a culture shock. Nevertheless, I came to appreciate its gifts of slowness and kindness--embracing a pace of life that allows more space for ease and conversation. I attended college in that same area, atop a mountain overlooking the Tennessee River Valley, where I began to cultivate a greater love for nature and further pursued opportunities that shaped my passion for cultivating rich and meaningful relationships with others. I then moved to Central Florida for graduate school and had the fortunate experience of often being in the presence of the ocean's vastness and tranquility. It was also during this time that I experienced significant trauma, grief, exploration and emergence. I've lived in Colorado since 2017, and I have deeply come to love the West for its rugged beauty and expansiveness.
I grew up immersed in many different kinds of conservative Christian spaces (churches, schools, organizations), and I continued to inhabit those environments into my young adulthood. It was during graduate school when I was at seminary (ironically) that I began to deconstruct and more critically engage with the deeply ingrained beliefs and frameworks I had been given. It was also during those years that I came to recognize I was gay--a realization that, at the time, was both daunting and liberating. That period of my life was characterized by a formative journey that included loss and shedding many things that I was outgrowing, as I began finding my way towards a more grounded place of integrity and wholeness.
I've always been curious about other human beings. My parents have told me stories about having to intentionally remind me to eat my food when we were out at restaurants--otherwise I would be fixated on people-watching. I'm fascinated by how we can be driven by so many things that are often unseen--desire, pain, untold stories, embedded beliefs, emotional impulses. I believe that everyone has a story worth hearing and exploring, and that everyone has inherent dignity, no matter the pain they have inflicted or suffered.
I believe that I cannot ask someone to venture into places that I have not traveled myself. Through my own personal experiences with therapy and internal work, I have had to tend to deep wounds, reckon with the aftermath of trauma, confront ways that I have chosen to live dictated by fear and fierce self-protection, and face hurt and harm that I have inflicted on others. I have also had to learn how to find my way out of shame into grief and self-forgiveness, and out of more rigid ways of thinking and being into places that are more spacious and nuanced. I hope to offer my clients a space that is safe and strong enough to both grieve and grow.