Welcoming Laura Hoge, RSW: A New Chapter in Our Practice

It’s with deep gratitude and care that I share a meaningful new chapter in the life of our practice. Laura Hoge, RSW (she/her) has joined Clayre Sessoms Psychotherapy Inc. full-time. I’m genuinely relieved to be writing these words, because bringing Laura into this practice feels both new and long-awaited.

Laura and I first met more than twenty years ago at a yoga ashram in rural Virginia. We were both early in our lives as bodyworkers, learning how attention, breath, and relationship can change a person’s experience from the inside. Since then, we’ve woven in and out of each other’s lives as writers, graduate students, therapists, and longtime friends. Working together now is not just a professional fit. It’s a lived, steady kind of delight.

This practice is growing carefully over the next two years, and Laura is a big part of that. Not as a “new hire.” As a true collaborator who strengthens the clinical depth of our team and helps our close-knit team build something sustainable.

Who Laura is in the room

Laura is grounded, spacious, and clear. She’s the kind of clinician who can sit with intensity without rushing it, and who can hold tenderness without sentimentalizing it. Her work is relational, body-aware, and practical. She helps people slow down enough to notice what’s true, then supports them in making changes they can actually process, understand, and live beyond the session—something we call "the living practice."

Laura works with:

• Adults who want therapy that is deep, steady, and human
• Older teens who need respectful care that doesn’t talk down to them
• Parents and caregivers who want support as they show up for their gender-diverse kids
• Therapists and helpers who want mentorship, consultation, and supervision that supports both skill and sustainability
  

A long history of embodied care

Laura and I have both been doing embodied work for more than two decades. Our roots are in yoga and body-based healing, and our clinical work has continued that same throughline: the belief that people make sense, that the body is carrying intelligent information, and that change happens best when we move at a pace that respects nervous systems and real lives.

In this work together, we are both fully certified in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and we’re training toward consultant-level certification for advanced students. We have also been shaped by excellent mentors, including Dr. Kekuni Minton, Katrina Curry, LMFT, Jackie Compton, RP, and others who model what it looks like to hold complexity with steadiness and care.

LGBTQ community advocacy and justice-rooted practice

Laura’s work has always lived at the meeting point of direct care and public advocacy. She has supported LGBTQ individuals and families for years, and she has also helped shape the broader conversation through writing, teaching, and policy work.

She’s written everything from gender-affirming care guidance for government-facing organizations and committees to articles in major U.S. publications, including USA Today, NJ Monitor, and The Advocate. She’s presented at conferences such as USPATH and WPATH, and she has participated in panels and professional spaces where the stakes are real for the communities we serve.

This matters because our practice is not built on empty affirmations. It’s built on competence, accountability, and a commitment to care that does not ignore context.

A builder, teacher, and mentor to other clinicians

Before joining our Vancouver-based therapy team, Laura founded and led a thriving multi-therapist LGBTQ-affirming therapy practice, Spectrum Health and Wellness LLC in Montclair, New Jersey. She knows what it takes to build a strong clinical culture, not only a full caseload.

She has also mentored and taught within graduate training environments, including Rutgers, where she supported developing clinicians and contributed to training programs. That experience strengthens our mentorship offerings and supports the way we’re building this practice over time: thoughtfully, clearly, and with strong ethical guardrails.

Laura’s training and specializations

Laura brings wide clinical range and strong integration skills. She is certified or trained in:

• Experiential therapy‍
• Gender-affirming care, including HRT and surgical assessments‍
• Grief therapy for bereavement, longing, and complex loss‍
• Post-psychedelic integration therapy‍
• Relationship therapy
• ‍Sensorimotor Psychotherapy®‍
• Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Therapy‍
  

Laura and I are also both WPATH GEI SOC8 Certified Professionals. This credential reflects advanced training, supervision, consultation, and examination in gender-affirming care. For many clients and families, it’s one more layer of reassurance that their care is held by clinicians who take competence seriously.

A special note for parents and caregivers of trans youth

A vital part of Laura’s work is supporting parents and caregivers of trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive youth. Often, young people are clearer than the adults around them. Parents love their child fiercely, they can still feel scared, unsure, or flooded by questions they don’t know where to place.

Laura offers an affirming online space where caregivers can bring the full range of their feelings without making it their teen’s job to carry them. This is the “parallel process” so many families need. A place to build steadier allyship, clearer language, and more grounded confidence.

She has also written three parent- and community-facing books that reflect this exact kind of care:

• Transcending Together: A Facilitator’s Guide to Empowering Transgender and Gender Diverse Individuals Through Support Groups
• Love Without Limits: A Grandparent’s Guide to Supporting and Advocating for Transgender Grandchildren
• Gender Literacy Workbook: A Self-Reflective Manual for Caregivers of Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth
  

If you’re looking for a starting point, you can read more about support for parents of trans youth.

Our shared vision: growing with care

Laura joining full-time expands what we can offer, and it also supports the practice itself as we grow over the next two years. Not growth for the sake of growth. Growth in service of sustainability, collective care, and better access to grounded therapy and mentorship.

If you’ve been waiting for support that feels both skilled and human, I’m glad you’re here.

An invitation

When you''re ready to work with a trauma-informed therapist online, I invite you to book a free 15-minute consultation with Laura Hoge, RSW.