Meet Rachel Leilani Edwards | Mental Health Therapist LPCC

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rachel Leilani Edwards and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rachel Leilani, what do you want people to remember about you?
Legacy is a huge concept to tackle, so to discuss what I would want mine to be, I’d want people to remember my work as a therapist on a more intimate scale. I would want to be remembered professionally for my creativity, for making therapy a place to feel safe but also crack jokes and have fun. I would want to be remembered as both caring and gentle when challenging a client, as someone that never made my clients feel ashamed or judged. I would like my clients to remember what it felt like to have their therapist believe in them, and I would like them to remember to create space for joy in their life long after our work together ends. I’d consider myself a private person, I’ve never really sought attention on a grand scale, so legacy in a fame sense is not my aspiration. I find in my personal life, my legacy lies in the closer details—I think there’s something special about the person beyond what they’ve done professionally or even who they’ve become. I want to be remembered in those small memories where I was seen, where I was known, where I was accepted, where I was maybe even a little annoying but still someone that was loved and seen with sincerity.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I’m a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor and my practice Reclaim to Restore Counseling offers therapy that is creative, culturally affirming, neurodivergent affirming, social justice oriented for people in California.

I’ve known I wanted to be a therapist since I was thirteen, and I wanted to be able to be creative and have fun in the process of that work. What I didn’t expect was that this work would push me into taking the leap of owning my own private practice. I consider myself to be a pretty risk aversive person, but one of the harder lessons this field has taught me is how to cope with leaving situations I never expected to leave and leave before I felt ready. I would say how I navigated the process of entrepreneurship and licensure is the thing I am most proud of, and it led me to make one of the best decisions of my career.

I’ve worked hard to create an authentic feel to my practice, and I do this through the way I dress and present myself. When I interned at twenty-one, I wanted to be taken seriously more than anything, which looked like Kohl’s blazers and box dye natural brown hair. My experiences working in nonprofits, schools, and groups practices taught me many valuable tools to further my career to where I am today. However, I faced many roadblocks and I found it discouraging having to operate alongside colleagues that were afforded many privileges I had to work without, to the point that I faced a lot of discrimination at a mandatory internship I had to pay to participate in. Eventually, I challenged ideas around professionalism and prioritized expression, color, and authenticity over my perception. Now as a business owner, I dress casually, show my tattoos, wear my silly frog earrings, and even have a green mullet.

I began to feel passionate about how being Native Hawaiian, Filipino, and Mexican impacted my experience in the field of Psychology and how I performed therapy. I felt it was most important to offer interventions that honored clients with similar identities and experiences. This is when I found my role in working with creatives, cultural trauma, and neurodivergence through trauma-informed creative interventions.

I’d like the world to know therapy can be unconventional. We can look at who you are as a complex person not in need of fixing but instead in need of being witnessed and understood. I want people to know their rage, their fear, their irritability, their dark humor, their hobbies and comfort characters all have a place in therapy with me. I want people to know we can hold grief while also making space for joy, we can honor and work with rage, and we learn how important it is for healing. I want people to know we can create excitement and also feel uncertainty, and that forgiveness is never necessary to find peace and safety. I want people to know that working with me means together we get to figure out how to define a life of feeling seen and hopeful.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If I could plan a few days for them, I would take them to lunch at Olvera street—specifically at the two stands my family has been going to for decades. One is to get taquitos with a styrofoam cup’s worth of avocado sauce at Cielito Lindo, this one is on the corner of the street across from the Chevron. Then, I would take us down a few stands to get a taco, rice, and bean plate from El Rancho Grande. If this is a Tuesday, I would make sure to take them to Da Poetry Lounge to watch some spoken word poetry performances. It’s one of my favorite creative spaces in the city. If we’re lucky, it’s a slam night, and the audience gets to participate in judging which is such a fun experience, everyone cheers so loudly. If it’s any other night of the week, we would go through some notable drives in LA, possibly Angel’s Crest Highway, through the Santa Monica Mountains, or down PCH to catch a beautiful view of the sunset.

To start another day, I would make sure to take them by Dayglow coffee shop in West Hollywood to see one of my good friends who is a barista there, and to try their Totoro drink. It’s great, it has sweet black sesame, vanilla, and charcoal. Then we could walk over for our lunch reservation at Pura Vita, my favorite vegan restaurant. After lunch, we would check out the Griffith Observatory, and I would end the night by taking them to a concert at the Hollywood bowl, bringing a basket of snacks and drinks!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I have my community to thank: I want to thank my family for their sacrifices that allowed me to be the first to pursue my Bachelors in Psychology and Masters in Counseling, and for being my biggest cheerleaders—shout out to my little sister for her supportive phone calls and editing help. I’m grateful for my classmates, friends, professors, and coworkers from LMU that both supported me through the graduate program and through the loss of my father. To my friends in the field, thank you for celebrating me, advocating for me, and for answering my many frantic phone calls. To my friends outside of the field, thank you for loving me into where I am now.

Website: https://www.reclaimtorestorecounseling.com/

Instagram: https://www.reclaimtorestorecounseling.com/

Other: https://www.inclusivetherapists.com/california/los-angeles/rachel-leilani-edwards

Image Credits
Brenda Medina