Nikki Finch (they/them)

I believe part of the value of therapy comes from getting support from another person (me!) who is focused on helping you reach success, and with whom you can safely practice new healthy patterns inside a secure and boundaried relationship. Before grad school, I worked with families who had resettled as refugees in Lansing. They convinced me that a personalist approach to care is as important as the broader struggle against unjust systems. My focus in grad school at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis was on trauma interventions and multicultural engagement. While I was living there, the Ferguson uprising gave me a valuable education as I learned from others who had been more affected than me by racialized violence and we invested together toward a new reality we still hope is possible. I came back to Lansing with renewed energy to use whatever capacities I had to work together with people toward their own liberation.

I hope my honesty, humor, and matter-of-fact acceptance makes you feel like it's safe to bring your whole self to our time together. I continue to work with refugees and immigrant youth who have made Lansing their home as well as with LGBTQ and Two Spirit communities, and others who have experienced traumas, transitions, and challenges. My clinical license is in social work, a profession that I chose because it claims to center client strengths, self-determination, and taking the whole scope of a person's context into consideration while constantly maintaining a focus on social justice. I strive to live up to this ethic in all aspects of my life, not only professionally. My volunteer work with local harm reduction and mutual aid networks, as well as on-the-ground advocacy for trans, immigrant, and racial justice causes, are as much a part of who I am as the paid work I do.