We had the good fortune of connecting with Jessica Gabard And Alexandra Barillas and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jessica Gabard and Alexandra Barillas, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
We met during our traineeship at graduate school and bonded right away! We worked at a high school and were both so excited to promote change and work in communities that needed mental health support. Although we worked together for a short period of time, we kept in touch and eventually talked about starting our own group practice. We were both passionate about our work and knew it would be meaningful to collaborate and partner together as a team. Given our common Latina heritage, we wanted to connect more with minority clients to make them feel seen and validated in their experiences and therapy needs. We’d like to help break the stigma and make finding a therapist more accessible and normal.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
We started our group practice, Healing Amigas Collective, in an effort to work together as a team to better support our clients in therapy.

Our business is unique in that there are not many minority owned group practices whose principal therapists are both Latina women. This gives us a unique perspective on the challenges facing those who come from minority cultures and backgrounds.

The fact that we started our own journey as coworkers has created a strong bond of shared experiences and has now evolved into a strong friendship. These shared experiences and cultural connection convinced us that partnering together to establish our own private practice offered more to our future clients than pursing individual practices as many within our field are inclined to pursue. In short, together we offer more to our clients than as individual therapists.
As with any business partnership, key to our sustainable success will be open and honest communication. This is especially critical when the business issues or challenges we face are difficult. As with any relationship between two human beings, ours does require work. As our relationship strengthens we believe this will benefit our clients. Modeling and thus equipping individuals with tools and strategies to cope with life’s stress is something our clients can take with them and apply on a daily basis.

What we want the world to know more than anything is that we are relatable and real, we get it. Life is not easy yet there are mechanisms and tools we can all apply as people to find hope and healing through life’s hurts, hardships and challenges.

Again, being that there is still such a stigma around seeking support and assistance with our mental health, especially in minority cultures. Our vision is for individuals to see getting help in this area as normal and encouraged. We have seen the struggle to ask for assistance with several of our clients, particularly in the Latino community.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
We were both born and raised in Southern California and are extremely proud of our city! The challenging part of living in such a special place is that there is never enough time to show our visitors everything. If we had a week, we would definitely make it a point to take them to the beach. Both of us love Hermosa Beach! A few other good places would be Abbot Kinney, Griffith Observatory, and The Getty Museum, and Barnsdall Park. When it comes to food, we both love introducing friends to some good street tacos. As far as restaurants go, a few of our our favorites are Bavel, Bestia, and Girl & The Goat. If our visitors stayed through the weekend, we’d make it a point to show them Joshua Tree. It’s only a few hours away from the city and beautiful!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
We are fortunate to have had great graduate school experiences. Jessica went to University of Southern California while Alexandra attended Pacific Oaks College. We both obtained Master’s Degrees in Marriage and Family Therapy. We met at Camino Nuevo Charter High school and loved the experience together during traineeship. We feel tremendous gratitude towards the school for bringing us together and providing such great mentoring and support during our traineeship. As a result, a big shoutout to Camino Nuevo!

Lastly, our friends and family have been incredibly supportive and encouraging through our long journey through graduate school, obtaining the hours required for licensure, and of course starting our own business.

Website: https://www.healingamigas.com

Instagram: @healing.amigas

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/healing-amigas-collective/

Image Credits
Lalene Leav and Carmelisse Photography

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