Meet Laurel S Justice of Front Range

Today we’d like to introduce you to Laurel S Justice.

Laurel S, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Laurel Justice
I am a Transformational Life Coach and Co-founder of the non-profit organization, SoulHaven Collective. After a 20-year career as a psychotherapist, I decided to pivot to coaching as a way to reach more people around the globe (therapy is generally limited to the state you are registered to practice within).
I think of myself as a seeker, a maker, and a guide—someone who believes, deep in my bones, that creativity and community are how we find our way home. I love being in the business of waking people up—to their own stories, their own wisdom, and the beautiful, untamed process of becoming. I’m also a visual artist, retreat and therapeutic intensive facilitator, speaker, consultant, comedian, and designer of transformational experiences. I also get hired to help businesses and organizations heal a team after a relational rupture or trauma.
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I have also deeply enjoyed serving on boards and commissions dedicated to the arts, wellness, and the creation of spaces where the human spirit can flourish. My greatest passion is leading workshops and retreats around the world, calling on nature, art, writing, dance, storytelling, and psychodrama to crack people open in the best way.
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Lately, I’ve been exploring my roots as a member of the Cherokee Nation, and have developed a keen interest in the use of plant medicine to heal trauma and ground people back into the soul of themselves.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There have definitely been struggles! I’m a believer that it’s just part of the human experience to struggle to bring forth things that have never existed before. As a mother of 4 children (grown now), and a practicing visual artist, and someone who runs both a therapy/coaching business and a non-profit organization, it’s been a lot to balance. I’m grateful to have learned that I can lean into help—admin assistants, teams, volunteers, friends, and all of my self care practices to make this rich, creative life sustainable. I have tended to have an unhealthy DIY approach to everything I do and then burn myself out. Thankfully, over the years, I have learned to trust my body to tell me when I am moving too fast and expecting too much, and I am more efficient at doing gentle resets. It’s now basically what I teach in any circle I’m in: how to care deeply for your nervous system in the life of the creative solopreneur.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
With a background in the fine arts, and a 20-year career in psychotherapy, I bring a creative lens to my clients’ stories while supporting their transformation. It is my privilege to invite others to recover the “mother tongue” of their heart by confronting the disruptions to fluency in that language. I use art, journaling, poetry, psychodrama, dance, nature, and other creative modalities to recover the most aligned versions of the client. Then we design actionable steps to move out what no longer serves this authentic, aligned self, and to move in what does.
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Though I have historically done this work in the context of therapy, I have now expanded to make this kind of work available in a coaching format so as to be able to offer it in just about any context around the world. I sometimes refer to the work as soul-tending, which is an old Jungian term, and it really seems to fit the kinds of experiences people are having.

In my non-profit, called SoulHaven Collective, we provide healing retreats for BIPOC artists. Our retreats are rooted in the belief that in order to creatively meet the demands of living an artist’s life sustainably, and to imaginatively confront the inequities around us using the arts, we must have a regulated nervous system. We offer all-expenses paid retreats and residencies designed to reset the nervous system by immersion in nature, beauty, embodied practices, community, and nurturance.

Doing this work, whether through my business or through the non-profit, is what I was made to do. There’s an old Cherokee saying that goes something like this: “May you live long enough to know why you are here.” I feel lucky to finally have a clear sense of that.

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Patience! Asking for help! Pivoting when stuff fails, goes away, or just isn’t working. Surrounding myself with people who prioritize self-care, love of others, transparency, vulnerability and personal growth. The “win” of a contract or deal or grant for the non-profit is always nice, but I’ve learned it’s not more important than integrity and the sincere care of care of others along the way. I don’t twist and contort myself or the organization to try and get the money to come in. It never feels good in the end. I’ve learned that keeping an abundance mindset helps me to not settle for situations that are not best for me and my team, and it sets us up to trust that what is “ours” is already coming to us. We just have to show up with the offering/opportunity.

Pricing:

• Therapeutic Intensives (3 full days) $6500-$10000.
• Hourly coaching $500-$1000
• Coaching package (6 month) $20k-30k
• Retreats/Group Intensives-custom pricing-just ask!
• SoulHaven Collective retreats-all expenses paid

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.soulhavencollective.org/
• Other: https://www.laurelsjustice.com/

Image Credits
Allison Daniell
Tal Marsolais