From the Depths of my Google Drive: About coeo

Here's something I wrote a bit ago for an Amazon grant that I'm going to assume we didn't win based on the fact we never heard back. But, since it will never see the light of day from Amazon, I'll share it here because I think it sums up what my partner and I are trying to build with coeo (and I want it to exist somewhere other than my Google Drive).

coeo [koy-yoh] is Latin for "come together, unite, heal." Kristen and I founded coeo three years ago as a mental health practice supporting individuals, couples, and families through some of life's inevitable messiness. We started coeo because we are two imperfect humans who have never quite fit the mold, and who are finally comfortable enough with ourselves to stop trying to. Instead of squeezing into a system that felt rigid, disconnected, and fundamentally flawed, we figured why not screw the status quo and try to do things differently. We believe that healing isn't something we do to people; it's something we cultivate with them. We're not in the business of simply relieving symptoms, nor do we believe humans need to be fixed. We're in the business of reconnection and healing. Reconnection to self, to others, to meaning, and to the terrifying yet beautiful freedom of being fully freaking alive. Because frankly, reality isn't as scary as the world wants us to think it is. We don't promise answers or package healing into neat, clinical language. And we certainly don't hide our humanness behind professional facades; especially not at the expense of connection. While there is no right way to heal, we believe that process should feel human, imperfect, and relational.

We never wanted to be traditional therapists. In fact, our goal is to put our therapy practice out of business (kidding, but not really). We struggle with society's obsession to self-optimize and reduce humans to individual metrics, parts, or pieces. That keeps people in silos; apart from each other and apart from themselves. Ubuntu, a Southern African philosophy often translated as "I am because you are," is not ours to claim. We reference it with deep respect and reverence, not to adopt it as our own, but because its ethos so beautifully captures the essence of our vision: the belief that individuals are shaped by their relationships, and that our well-being is deeply intertwined with the well-being of our communities. We want to create spaces where people can show up fully, feel seen, and return to themselves; not alone, but in relationship. We want to give humans back to themselves and each other, because what if the point isn't to be less broken, but more whole, together? To that end, we're not trying to scale our therapy practice. We're trying to scale humanness. And build something innovative that leverages the power of community to heal beyond 1-1 therapy.