Exploring Life & Business with Latalia White

Today we’d like to introduce you to Latalia White.

Hi Latalia, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My story starts in Appalachia – I was born and raised in West Virginia, where I grew up surrounded by family. I was always a studious kid who loved to read and learn, and I set some ambitious goals for myself, even in elementary school. In part thanks to pop culture, I became interested in going to an Ivy League university, despite my parents not having college degrees.

My parents encouraged me to go to college and were very supportive of my academic endeavors, but they told me I would have to study hard to earn financial aid since they could not afford to pay for college. As a result, I was very driven and perfectionistic in my pursuit of straight A’s from grades 3-12, and I succeeded in that. I graduated as valedictorian of my high school class and was accepted to Princeton University, which has ranked as the nation’s #1 university every year since 2012. I attended at essentially no cost to me or my family thanks to Princeton’s exceptional need-based financial aid program. It was a dream come true for a kid like me to go to the best school in the country for free.

So, at 18 years old, I left WV for Princeton, NJ, where I experienced some culture shock. I found myself exposed to new people, new ideas, and a newfound independence. I was suddenly a small fish in a big pond, and it was a big adjustment. I ended up majoring in Slavic languages and literature thanks to the decision within my first week to study Russian for my foreign language requirement. That led to my spending a summer in St. Petersburg, Russia, after which I joined our Slavic department. I combined my love of children’s literature with my Slavic studies by writing a senior thesis on how the realms of reality and fantasy intersected in one of the first pieces of Russian children’s literature, foreshadowing my interest in the psychological world.

I felt little clarity around my career path as I approached graduation, so thanks to a helpful advisor in our career center, I ended up applying to and being accepted into a fellowship program that placed Princeton alumni in nonprofits across the country. I was placed in a children’s after-school program in Chicago to help with academic programming. It was there that I eventually felt myself turn away from the nonprofit and education world and toward mental health.

Thanks to some lovely Princeton mentors, I discovered Northwestern University’s program in marriage and family therapy and instantly knew that I had found my career and my calling. I completed my master’s degree and worked for several years in downtown Chicago as a marriage and family therapist before my husband’s career brought us to Colorado Springs in April 2020. I have continued working as a marriage and family therapist here, obtaining my fully independent license in 2022 and opening up my therapy practice in January 2023.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not perfectly smooth, no. There have certainly been bumps in the road, but I have always been fortunate to have loving and supportive family, friends, and mentors to guide me along every turn.

I was extremely fortunate to have attended Princeton for free, but it was not easy academically or socially for me – I felt less prepared than many of my peers, and my mental health suffered with high anxiety. Starting with my time at Princeton, the spaces I have found myself in since leaving West Virginia have been very different culturally from my upbringing, which is its kind of struggle and balancing act.

There have also been struggles in the journey of becoming a therapist: it is a demanding profession, with graduate school sort of operating as your intensive therapy for two years! Then, when I moved to Colorado from Illinois during my licensure process, I felt discouraged by all the extra clinical hours I would need to acquire that I had not needed in Illinois, which threw off my career plan for several years.

Now, as a small business owner, I get to experience the ups and downs of trying to get a therapy practice off the ground.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Latalia White LLC?
I am a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) running my therapy practice centered on helping clients achieve clarity in their relationships. I help all kinds of couples improve their romantic relationships, but my focus is on an uncomfortable and traumatic area for many: infidelity. I help couples who, once the cheating is out in the open, are trying to figure out if it is possible to repair their relationship and come out stronger on the other side instead of either jumping to divorce or staying unhappy and avoidant for years.

I also do individual therapy for both the unfaithful and the betrayed partners in these situations, but especially the unfaithful male partners – I love working with men trying to understand themselves in relationships better. Additionally, I help people understand their relationship to money, especially people who (like me) have experienced upward shifts in their socioeconomic status and want to make sense of all the feelings that come along with this and understand where in their family backgrounds their financial attitudes come from.

At the heart of my practice is the belief that we are all worthy human beings, even when we make mistakes, and that we heal and learn we are good enough through safe and secure relationships with our loved ones. At the root of many of my clients’ issues – and I have experienced this myself, as a recovering perfectionist – is wondering whether they are good enough, whether they are worthy, whether they are lovable.

In my therapy office, I get to offer unconditional support to people who may be experiencing some of the greatest pain you can feel in romantic relationships. I get to share with them that so many people have been impacted by the trauma of infidelity (even though nobody wants to talk about it) and that cheating does not have to define you or your relationship for your entire life. There is no greater honor than being trusted with people’s deepest secrets and pains, so I show up with warmth and gentleness to collaborate with my clients.

I currently work with adults ages 18 and up in individual, couple, and family therapy. I offer telehealth services for any adult in the state of Colorado as well as in-person sessions in Colorado Springs. I also periodically hold workshops on various topics – I am currently creating a workshop for 2024 that uses the music of Taylor Swift to explore relationships and mental health topics!

So maybe we end by discussing what matters most to you and why.
Human connection matters to me. I am concerned about what our Surgeon General has deemed as an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” Humans are meant to be in a relationship with one another, but so many of my clients have reported that they wish to have deeper and stronger social ties and struggle to foster these.

It is so important to be in relationships with people with whom we feel safe and secure, and this is what couples therapy is all about – strengthening safety and security with your partner and understanding where the barriers to this are coming from. We all just want to be seen, to be heard, to be understood, so any work I can do to help facilitate this between people is so meaningful to me.

One of my favorite movies is “Before Sunrise,” and I love this quote from Celine: “If there’s any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed, but…who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt.” I agree – we all must attempt to truly understand each other, and from this, we can grow in our love for ourselves and each other.

Pricing:

• $175 for a 50-minute therapy session.

Contact Info:

• Website: lataliawhite.com
• Other: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/latalia-white-colorado-springs-co/489642

Image Credits
Cristy Barefoot Images by Jen