Exploring Life & Business with Heather James of Living Wellsprings, LLC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather James.

Hi Heather , so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I started off as a missionary counselor overseas (I was a non-professional faith based counselor at the time which is not a liscenced position). However, when faced with a mental health situation that neither I nor anyone else in the area was experienced to deal with, I decided it was time to return to the USA for more training. I completed my masters in clinical mental health counseling, and shortly after finishing was invited to join the counseling team at my church. The team is comprised of affiliated counselors only, which meant I had to open my own private practice for this. While I was a little nervous, opening my own business was a step that I eventually hoped to do anyway. So I took the leap and that’s how Living Wellsprings, LLC was born.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
My journey has been a combination of smooth and challenging circumstances. For one, I decided I wanted to be a counselor my senior year of college. I didn’t have the means to move straight on to grad school, so I minored in psychology, and then took a certified faith based training course. So that was the first challenge. However, I was able to serve in this capacity overseas for 10 years and absolutely loved it and was able to help so many people that I may not have reached otherwise.
My second challenge was grad school. I felt pressure like never before to speak and practice in a way that felt unnatural while holding the conviction that helping people must always come from a place of being real with them. It got so bad that I questioned whether I really wanted to be a counselor after all. However I’m so glad I stuck with it because I love what I do now. It was also a bit challenging to set up a business when I had never done that before. It felt scary. Now I go to work and am so glad to get to do what I do. Of course I have hard days like anyone, but I wouldn’t trade my job for the world. It’s definitely a good fit for me.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Living Wellsprings is a private practice that helps people in counseling. Currently it is just me, though have a great team of affiliates to work alongside at Grace Church. I work with a wide variety of issues including individual counseling for emotional and relational struggles or concerns, grief work, boundaries and codependency struggles, kids and teens counseling often with the use of play, art, or sandtray components, multilingual/multicultural issues (for instance workers returning from overseas and immigrants, I am fluent in Spanish), and spiritual concerns.

What’s next?
While I don’t plan to make any big changes at the present time, I would eventually like to expand my business to include a few extra workers including space for interns and a marriage counselor (which is not an area I do). I still need to get my independent (next level) liscence, and train to be a supervisor for this to happen. But it would be really neat to one day have my own office space with multiple rooms for counseling, a kid therapy room with toys and sandtrays, and a room for group work or trainings.