Meet Ellen.

Ellen Louise Ray, MA, MFA, MSW, LCSWA, LCAS

As a former teacher, a lifelong learner, and a survivor of complex trauma, I have a special heart for serving creatives, seekers, teachers, and trauma survivors. I love helping my clients rediscover their capacity for inspiration, growth, and play so they can build lives where they feel strong, whole, and free.

I received my Master of Social Work degree from UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Social Work. While at Chapel Hill, I also trained to become a Licensed Clinical Addiction Specialist (LCAS) so that I could empower individuals who are interested in ceasing or decreasing their substance use or who are maintaining their recovery from addictive behaviors. Since earning my MSW, I have trained in a number of evidence-based modalities designed to help folks integrate trauma and claim their power, including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Internal Family Systems (IFS).

Back in 2009, I received my BA in Humanities from Yale. My coursework there allowed me to peer at human nature from many different angles: history, literature, philosophy, religion, and art. It cemented what was already true for me: I am fascinated by and devoted to human beings. Following my graduation, I showed up in this world primarily as a teacher: middle school language arts, high school social studies, undergraduate creative writing, and even a brief stint as a high school economics teacher (a student once drew a cartoon of me as “Captain Util” that I still proudly display in my home office). During the 2016-2017 academic year, I was the 35th Writer in Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., and in the early 2010s, I earned my MA from the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English.

In 2016, I earned my MFA in creative writing from Hollins University's Jackson Center for Creative Writing ( a dream), and, now, in addition to stealing free moments every day to scrawl at essays, poems, and a novel-in-progress, I love using creative writing and literature therapeutically. Writing isn’t about getting it right—like many of us were taught in school. Writing is about allowing what’s inside of us, waiting, to come out onto the page, to surprise us, to help us more deeply understand and know who we are and the wisdom we hold.

As a writer and lifelong student, I have to admit that I’ve spent a lot of my life in my own head. It wasn’t until my early 30s that I seriously began to realize that I have a body, and that I began to come back into it. Running and hiking were gateways to yoga, meditation, and, most recently, rock climbing. Now I have a daily embodied practice that helps me remember the gift of being in a body, of having access to all five senses, of being able—sometimes excruciatingly—to deeply feel. Coming back to my body has meant reckoning with traumas that I had habitually pushed away, and it has meant more consistent pleasure and joy than I ever knew when I denied my connection with this flesh and blood that allows me to move and breathe and be in our world. I love offering what I’ve learned about the body to others who have lived in their heads and shoved their somatic experiences away. My background as a yoga teacher (RYT® 200) allows me to move into this work even more deeply and to bring the breath, body, and spirit into the therapy room.

As a part of my movement away from the societal drugs of doing and productivity, I prioritize daily practice of my favorite ways of being: yoga, meditation, ritual (I love using Tarot and oracle decks as tools), hikes in our Blue Ridge Mountains, playing and singing to my guitar, bird watching, gardening, pottery, writing, reading, and slow strolls with my senior pup.

My perspective is shaped by my identity as a trauma survivor as well as a queer, cisgender (she/her pronouns), white, non-disabled, middle-class woman who is educationally privileged and spiritually oriented. I am daily working to recognize the limits of my vision, the privileges I hold, and the responsibility I own to repair personal and ancestral wrongs. One small way I do this is by donating a portion of my earnings each month to The Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM) and The Loveland Foundation.

I live and work on ᏣᎳᎫᏪᏘᏱ Tsalaguwetiyi (Cherokee), S’atsoyaha (Yuchi), and Miccosukee land.