Rosemary Lloyd

After graduating from Meridian, Rosemary worked at a Waldorf school in Petaluma with Seeds of Awareness, a small nonprofit that provided mindfulness and Gestalt-based therapy for underserved populations. Because much of what she learned at Meridian always had creative, expressive, and experiential components, she could incorporate these aspects into her work with children. She had learned about movement/somatic, breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation techniques, and bilateral stimulation techniques in Yoga Therapy and Yoga Psychology, and applied them to work with children to help build mood management skills.

At Seeds of Awareness, she was additionally trained in mindfulness techniques, which fit well with her existing work. She began to work with older kids and teens and could still apply these aspects as well as other meditation and ecopsychology work.

While she worked at Seeds of Awareness, she also briefly worked at Russian Rivers Counselors, where she applied expressive arts and somatic work in her youth programs.

Rosemary now works for the nonprofit TLC Child and Family Services. Her primary position is working with teenagers who are suicidal, adopted from foster care, or are in residential housing due to safety issues. She works with individuals with high degrees of suicidality, mental illnesses, or complex early childhood trauma. Some of the youth she works with are challenged with substance abuse, to which she applies the holistic, non-judgmental approaches she learned in her Ecstatic States substance abuse class. She also draws from other approaches she learned at Meridian from assigned readings and trauma training.

Another class from Meridian that she feels supported her was Neuropsychology, in which she learned how trauma affects the brain, how to manage somatic symptoms through addressing the nervous system, and how various medications work on brain function and thinking patterns. As she has continued training in trauma, she applied what she learned to understand how the brain works in children, how it develops, and how it functions when experiencing trauma.

In addition to children and teens, Rosemary wants to maintain a balance of who she works with and is interested in counseling couples and families. Although she loves kids and has worked with them extensively, she would also like to get solid experience with a variety of other populations.

Rosemary has been asked to lead online classes, including a training session on Depth Psychology and a seminar on animals as mood management and spiritual connection tools.

She would like to teach classes and do more writing and publishing, but she also balances having two teenagers and working full-time. “I think it's really fun to teach and have people be eager to learn.”

Eventually, she thinks it would be great to open a private practice.

Rosemary is exploring the idea of doing this as a collective since she loves facilitating group therapy. She would also like to do outdoor trips, like rites of passage or camping trips, whether it be a group of women, older adults, or teenagers. Since she wanted to work with refugees when she started, it would also be great to work internationally at some point, even if it was volunteering. Rosemary uses what she learned at Meridian to fuel various passions and goals and encourages other students to advocate for themselves, keep looking for places they want to work, and push through completing their hours.