I spent 35 years in state service before I became a therapist, so I understand what it means to reinvent yourself later than you expected to. I'm Cheri Keller, a Marriage and Family Therapy intern at Northwest Relationships, supervised by Robin Beckley, LMFT, an AAMFT Approved Supervisor.

I work with individuals, couples, families, and teens on anxiety, grief, religious trauma, and the parenting challenges nobody warns you about before you're already in the middle of them. Religious trauma in particular, the aftermath of a faith environment that didn't leave room for who you actually are, is an area I take seriously and don't rush past in favor of more generic anxiety framing. I trained at Antioch University Seattle and I'm completing my clinical hours toward full licensure.

My own career change means I have a genuine, lived understanding of what it's like to question a direction you've been on for decades and choose a different one anyway, which comes up more than you'd think in work with clients facing their own major life pivots. That same patience for a slow, deliberate change of course applies just as well to two people renegotiating a relationship as it does to one person rebuilding a career.

Individuals, couples, and families in Tacoma and across Washington navigating religious trauma, parenting challenges, or a major life reinvention find a patient ally here, mid-career or otherwise.

If you're wondering whether it's too late to work through something you've carried a long time, it isn't, and I'd know. The intake form is where that starts. Sessions run 53 minutes, and I see clients 12 and up, so a parent and a teenager can each have support without needing to be in the exact same room to get it.