Our therapist, Melissa Lopez thinks about death…a lot. Well, it is part of her job, after all. We sat down with our Women in Recovery expert, at the Coffee Pot in Echo Park, to talk about addiction and grief therapy. But, our discussion took some unexpected turns. From the societal implications of Harry Potter, to the importance of sacred physical spaces, Melissa offered her unique insights on a plethora of psychological topics. Do you know what a Mujerista is? Do you know why feminists should be wary of watching True Blood? Read on to find out!

Laurie Wheeler: Well, let’s jump right in. What aspects of the Center’s mission speak to you as a woman and as a therapist?

Melissa Lopez: Historically in the mental health profession, women have been so stigmatized and pathologized. When I heard about the Center, I thought it was a really novel idea. Frequently a woman’s feelings are invalidated or disregarded with phrases like, “She’s being hormonal,” or, “She’s on her period,” or, “She’s going through menopause.” That doesn’t mean that a woman’s feelings are any less valid. It just means that she is feeling things more intensely. The Center is about respecting those feelings.

As a therapist, I’ve always tried to think about how to empower people and move away from pathology. When I started learning about the Center, I really liked that feminist theory is used in the therapy process here. At the Center, we are egalitarian in our relationships with our clients. I feel that I am there to walk with the client and figure things out together. I believe whole-heartedly in feminism, and this is where I want to be.

Also, I have always been a big believer in space. I feel having specific physical places, be it a space for women or a space for people of color, is very important. It doesn’t mean that it excludes others, but it means that this is a place that specifically speaks to that population. Physical space also creates emotional space. The client and I create that together. The fact that this place exists is so important.

LW: Do you think that the pathologizing of women in the mental health field stems from the fact that the foundations of psychology are patriarchal? Because now there are a lot of women in this field. I’d guess they are the majority now.

ML: All the therapeutic models that we now practice were created by men. We need more women in the field dictating the course of research and discourse. I think it’s really powerful to have a staff that’s predominantly women, in a space that is for women. This is not a place where we immediately try to diagnose you and put a label on you. Those have already been put on women in other places, and that’s not what we are about here.

LW: What was your experience studying at Smith College like?

ML: Smith is where I got interested in physical space because I was one of 18 students of color in a class of 121 students. There is something really sacred about a space created specifically for a minority group. That translates to the Center, too. By emphasizing the psychology of women, we create mental space for clients. Women dictate the course, whatever that means, and it is ever-evolving.

Think about how much space has been taken away. We’ve gotten into a mentality of colonization. So we need to ask our selves, “How can I own space?” We need to think of it physically, but also mentally. We translate these ideas for clients. We ask them how they can take space for themselves, for who they are. I think that is very powerful. I try to do that in my own life.

LW: What do you enjoy most when you meet a new client?

ML: I think meeting a new client is like going on a blind date in a way. You have all these feelings coming up. There is initial excitement, but there are also nerves.

I find this work to be a great honor. To sit with somebody for an hour, and to be present, and have that person entrust to you their secrets and their fears, that is huge to me. It’s exciting to meet another person and find out all the complexities of who they are. Sometimes clients will identify their problem, and they will compartmentalize it. But once we start to get into the more complex layers, who they were growing up, who they are in society, what has impacted them in society, we find interconnectedness. That is really exciting.

LW: It’s definitely a unique experience to meet someone and immediately start talking about those types of things.

ML: Right. I remember thinking it was a little odd when I first met my therapist. I felt like I was entrusting her with so much, and I’d never even met her before. I try to convey to clients that I understand that feeling, because I’ve been there. I think it is really important for a therapist to be on the flip side of the experience and be the client, because then you can really empathize with how hard it is. It’s very naked. It can be so scary.

LW: I know you’ve done a lot of work with grieving. Can you speak to what that means to you and how you incorporate the Day of the Dead into grief therapy?

ML: I think sometimes we undermine grief in this society. Loss and death have to be so polite. People don’t give themselves the opportunity to grieve. I find, in treatment, there can be a lot of grief work even though there hasn’t been a death, because there are so many different levels of grief in our lives. Whether or not you’ve experienced a person’s physical death, you’ve had a loss. It could be moving, or leaving a role as a child to become an adult, getting a divorce, losing a really good job, or losing a sense of freedom. So the question is what does grief mean, and where does it apply?

Growing up Mexicana and Chicana, Day of the Dead was always really important to me and to my culture. I started to think about how I could apply it to the work I do with clients. There is a term I coined called The Death Narrative which is focusing on and talking about how a person died. The Death Narrative is really important because it helps us process the event. But, sometimes we get stuck there. One of the principles of Day of the Dead is to talk about their life, and honor who they were when they were alive. Once you start to do that, you realize all the things this person was to you, and what you have lost. I call this the Loss Inventory. If you stay stuck in the Death Narrative, you don’t always fully recognize what you lost. I think that there are a lot of people who have experienced a stunted grief process and carry that around. Later on that will come out as anxiety, or depression, or through conflict in other relationships. We don’t realize that we have never fully processed that grief.

LW: What drew you to work with women in recovery?

ML: There is so much stigmatization of people who are struggling with addiction and abuse. There is still this societal belief that a person should just be able to “snap out of it.” We need to look at the multiple levels at play in a person’s life who is struggling, and understand that it is not about willpower.

I think women have extra challenges to face when they deal with addiction. A woman’s children might get taken away or she might be labeled a bad mom. Sometimes women will end up having to do sex work. If a woman is in a relationship with a man who is struggling with abuse, the woman might perform sex acts with other men to get money for her partner to buy drugs. So, there is another unseen layer of impact for women in recovery.

LW: Do you think it has to do with women being perceived as caretakers in a historical context?

ML: Yes, that is the other part of it. What are all the individual pressures that women have? To be a nurturer, to be a mom, to be married. Then bring in the addiction or abuse factor. Then you also have to contemplate the different ways women are abused, be it rape or incest, and how many times addiction appears due to that abuse. Addiction really spans a lot of issues that are important for women.

LW: Switching gears a little, what are some of your favorite books?

ML: I love the Harry Potter series. It sounds really cheesy, but I love it because there is so much there that correlates to society: Racism and sexism, even classism and grief. My favorite character is Dumbledore because he is helping Harry Potter through his grief process throughout the series. People always laugh at me, but I always say that if I were ever to enter academia I would teach a whole course on Harry Potter and grief work.

LW: I think people joke about children’s literature a lot and they make fun of adults who read it, but I think that sort of writing speaks to a very inherent part of all of us.

ML: I love children’s books and I have a collection of them. I love anything by Shel Silverstein. I also love the Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse series, which was turned into True Blood. I love it because you can correlate the relationships between vampires, werewolves and humans to contemporary racism, sexism, and homophobia. Slogans like “Out of the Coffin” and “Can You Marry a Vampire” are so relevant to what is going on right now with gay marriage. The part I struggle with is the amount of violence that exists towards the main character, Sookie, in the books. All the violence towards women is hard for me to sit with sometimes.

LW: Do you have a favorite movie?

ML: Oh, Grease! I love Grease. I want to be a Pink Lady.

LW: Maybe we should get some jackets made for the Center.

ML: Right, with Hazel [our bird mascot, link to article goes here] on the back.

LW: What are your interests outside of psychology and feminism?

ML: I love anything supernatural and I love Halloween. I like doing anything involving that stuff. I like reading and spending a lot of time with my dogs. I’m a big animal advocate.

LW: Can you talk about how you think there should be counseling available at veterinary offices for people who have just had to put down their pet?

ML: I think that people don’t validate pet loss, and sometimes those relationships are as intimate or more intimate then the ones that a person has with humans. A lot of people in society will invalidate that and say “Oh, it’s just a dog.”

LW: Why do you think some people connect more to animals than to other people? What do you think that is?

ML: Here is this animal that you never fight with. There isn’t really one bad memory with this animal. When people die, you have a range of memories. With pets, you don’t really have any bad moments. You have this creature that loves you unconditionally. I think that is a unique thing. A dog or cat is always there for you. Who else is that excited when you come home? Sometimes when you get home, your kids are screaming, or your husband or partner barely acknowledges you. But here is this animal that fully connects with you. I think that is why the loss is sometimes so great. You are losing a symbol of unconditional love and acceptance. I had a dog for fourteen years. That’s longer than some relationships. It is a special thing. I think that’s why pet bereavement is a little different.

Some people have loving families and friends and they get a lot of support. There are also people who don’t have that. Their pet is the only thing they have. When that dog or cat dies, that’s a huge loss. That is their only support system. Some people just can’t reach that level of intimacy with other people, and they can reach it with an animal.

LW: If you could sum yourself up as a therapist in three words what would they be?

ML: I would say mindful, diverse, and affirming.

LW: Can you tell us a little about what your tattoos mean?

ML: The tattoos are pretty personal, but I’ll tell you a little bit about what they are.

Mark (our interview photographer): Is that an LCSW on your wrist?

ML: Yeah, I’ll tell you about the LCSW. I am the only person in my family to have graduated from college, to have gone to graduate school, and to have any kind of credential. I love tattoos and I would always say “When I get licensed, I’m going to get my credentials tattooed on.” And so I did. Some people thought it was weird, but for me it is just a reminder, not of my credentials, but of how far my family has come. It’s not about me even. It’s more about my mom because she is really about how I got here. The sunflowers on the side of the LCSW are there because my mom loves sunflowers.

This tattoo is actually in honor of my mom. Her first initial is V, but V is also an ancient symbol of a woman’s womb. So, I come from Virginia’s womb. The butterfly means rebirth.

This is an Om, which is a mantra, but it also represents the four stages of consciousness: Awake, enlightenment, sleep stage, sleep stage with dreams. It represents the connection between the spiritual and physical self.

LW: How do you define being a feminist, and what does that word mean to you?

ML: I actually relate more to the term Mujerista. One of my great friends coined the term, and I love it. Historically, women of color have had issues with the term feminism because it implies the white woman’s experience. It’s similar to some gay people of color referring to themselves as queer because they feel like the gay movement has focused on white gay males.

I really like the term Mujerista because it is in my language. I grew up in a culture where I was told “You need to cook,” or, “You need to learn how to be there for a man and get married.” The term Mujerista defined my own liberation, and in a way, it felt like it created space.

When I was in college, being a feminist meant you don’t wear makeup and you don’t wear heels. You burn your bra, or whatever. That’s not who I am. To me, it’s about wearing skirts, heels, and makeup because I want to, not because society says I have to. It’s about taking ownership and asking, “Why do I do these things? Do I do them because they are fun and I want to, or am I doing them because I feel pressure to do so.” So being a Mujerista means creating my own space and empowering women to do the same, and take back the space that has been taken from them.

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To learn more about Melissa, or to book an appointment, visit her Center page here.

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1. Gabrielle Forman educates us on LGBTQ issues during her interview with Gay Culture Education
2. Radio Interview
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Another great source of my inspiration was Maya Angelou’s poem, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” a poem which reminds me that we become stronger through the adversity we face. I tell my clients that confronting strife builds character, and that each of us deserves to be free, be it from a cage of our own making or one that society has built around us. Through my development of the Center’s mission, the cage became a foundational theme in the development of our logo.

My husband and I started a mood board, collecting design elements that spoke to us. During an early brainstorming session, the idea for our logo began to crystallize: A cage with an open door, and a bird sitting atop the Center’s crest, a symbol of strength and protection. As my husband was gearing up to start designing, we realized that many of the creative elements we fell in love with were by one artist, the amazing and talented, Teagan White. We ended up contacting her out of the blue and asked if she would collaborate with us to create the logo for the Center. At the time, she was just 19 and a sophomore in Minneapolis College of Art & Design. She was very enthusiastic, a little nervous, and a whole lot of cool. With direction from my husband, she turned our logo concept into a beautiful and powerful graphic.

Just after the Center opened, Erika Hirsch and I were admiring the logo and commenting on how cute the bird was, but we were a little sad she didn’t have a name. Erika, who is a whiz with proper nouns, (her car was called Maverick, pre-Palin) suggested Hazel, and it stuck! In fact, our newest therapist, Melissa Lopez, was initially drawn to the Center when she saw Hazel on one of our fliers. All of us in the Center family have fallen in love with Hazel, and now that you know her back-story, we hope you do too.

Related Posts:

1. Interview with Melissa Lόpez
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