A therapy group · Now gathering interest
When home wasn't safe to be seen
A small, closed therapy group for queer adults navigating family rejection and religious trauma — the kind that was said out loud, and the kind that never needed to be.
Blending Internal Family Systems and Somatic Experiencing to work with what rejection leaves in the body: the hiding, the bracing, the reach that never got to land.
I'm interested Learn moreWho this is for
You learned to read a room before you learned to rest in one.
When the people who were supposed to be home couldn't hold who you are, your system did something brilliant: it protected you. It learned to scan, to edit, to earn, to shrink. Those strategies kept you safe — and they may still be running, long after you've built a life where more of you is welcome.
This group is for queer adults carrying that history. You might recognize yourself here:
What we'll tend to
This work happens in the body, at the body's pace.
We won't rush your protectors or pathologize what kept you alive. Together, and in small doses your nervous system can actually use, we'll make room for:
Meeting the protectors
Getting to know the parts of you that hide, edit, earn, and caretake — with respect for the real protection they've provided, and clarity about where they're still needed versus where they're costing you.
Softening the fold
Working gently with the shame that lives in the body — the caved chest, the dropped gaze — and letting the spine find its length again, one small increment at a time.
Grieving the family you needed
Making room for anger and grief before anyone asks you to arrive at acceptance. You're allowed to mourn the parents you needed — without closing any doors you don't want closed.
Returning what was never yours
Tending to religious trauma and the inherited messages — spiritual, cultural, generational — that were handed to you, and beginning the work of giving them back.
Practicing being seen
Letting warm attention arrive in doses you choose, in a room of people who get it — so belonging becomes something your body experiences, not just an idea.
Building chosen ground
Strengthening your felt sense of the belonging you've already built — chosen family, community, partnership — so it can hold weight when the old grief moves.
The shape of the group
Small, closed, and intentional.
Final schedule, format, and investment will be shaped by the interest gathered here — including whether we begin with an in-person Atlanta cohort, a virtual cohort, or both. Sharing interest is not a commitment.
Your facilitator
Shae Ivie-Williams, LPC, SEP
Shae is a licensed somatic trauma therapist and the founder of The Healing Spot Therapy + Wellness in Atlanta. She is also a queer individual who knows this terrain from the inside — she carries her own lived experience of family not accepting her queerness, and of the religious trauma that so often travels with it. This group isn't work she facilitates from a distance; it's work she has lived.
Her clinical work integrates Internal Family Systems, Somatic Experiencing, and EMDR to help people come home to bodies that learned, early, that home wasn't safe. She holds this group as affirming, unhurried space — where every part of you is welcome, including the ones that aren't sure yet.
Licensed in Georgia, Florida, California & South Carolina · Somatic Experiencing Practitioner · 500+ hours of advanced clinical training
Gathering interest
If something here resonated with you, tell us.
Sharing your interest lets us know you'd like to be kept in the loop as the group takes shape — and helps us build the schedule and format around the people who need it. No commitment, no pressure. Just a hand raised.
Questions first? Visit healingspotatl.com to learn more about the practice.