Sage Counseling LLC

07/19/2026

A beautiful story about relationship and hope. This nurse has made such a difference in people’s lives.

07/12/2026

Today, we celebrate our non-binary and gender non-conforming community at the start of International Non-binary People’s Awareness Week!

What does it mean to be non-binary?

💛 Non-binary is an identity embraced by some people who do not identify exclusively as a man or a woman.

🤍 Non-binary people may identify as being both a man and a woman, somewhere in between or as falling completely outside of these categories.

💜 While many also identify as transgender, not all non-binary people do.

🖤 Non-binary can also be used as an umbrella term encompassing identities such as agender, bigender, genderq***r or gender fluid.

06/27/2026

Many clients I’ve worked with have experienced the kind of religious trauma discussed here. It is important to know how important full, welcoming inclusion is for any q***r person.

Nearly half of Americans who left religion cite the mistreatment or rejection of LGBTQ people as an important reason. But how do the LGBTQ people who stay find healing?

06/26/2026

What a lovely story. Family comes in many ways.

When five-year-old Michael Clark Jr. found out he was finally going to be adopted, he did not want to celebrate quietly. He wanted everyone he loved to be there.

So he invited his entire kindergarten class.

Michael had spent time in foster care before Andrea Melvin and Dave Eaton took him in. After a year of fostering him, the couple were ready to make it official and become his forever family. To a little boy, that hearing was the most important day of his life, and he wanted his friends beside him for it.

His teacher thought that was exactly right. She gathered the whole class, and on the morning of the hearing, around twenty kindergarteners filed into a courtroom in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Each of them carried a bright paper heart on a stick.

As the judge made Michael's adoption official, his classmates waved their hearts in the air and cheered. One by one, the judge asked the children why they had come. Their answers were as simple as they were perfect. "I love Michael." "Michael's my best friend."

Dressed in a little vest and red bowtie, Michael got to bang the gavel himself, surrounded by his new parents and a sea of five-year-olds who had shown up just for him.

His teacher put it best. They began the school year as a family, she said, because family is not always about blood. Sometimes it is just love and support, waving paper hearts in a courtroom 💛

06/23/2026

We all have feelings and can learn to have a good relationship with them.

Both Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert’s dads died when they were 10. Anderson now hosts a podcast, “All There Is,” about dealing with grief, while Stephen has frequently used his platform to talk about how you never really move on — you just relearn how to live ❤️‍🩹

“It's a gift to exist,” Colbert told Cooper. “And with existence comes suffering. There's no escaping that. But if you are grateful for your life. Then you have to be grateful for all of it.”

Grateful for great men like them who show their emotions 🙏🏽

They’re surely saving lives.

06/08/2026

Being q***r is not a mental health issue, but oppression causes a great deal of pain. Celebrate you and make use of these resources or share them with someone you know.

Being LGBTQ+ isn’t a mental illness. However, many LGBTQ+ people experience mental health struggles linked to societal stigma, discrimination, and denial of their civil and human rights.

06/03/2026

When I was a small boy, I used to search for myself everywhere...in the families on television, in the love stories in books, in the lives of the grown-ups around me. I was looking for proof. Proof that a boy like me could grow up and be loved out loud. That there was a version of the future where I belonged in it. I rarely found it. And when you don’t see yourself anywhere, you start to wonder if you’re allowed to exist at all.

I think about that boy often. I think about how desperate he was for one image, just one, of a family that looked like the one he secretly hoped he might someday have. How much lighter he would have felt if someone had simply shown him: this is possible, and it is beautiful.

So let me say to him, and to every kid still searching: it is possible. It is beautiful. I know, because I’m living it. I love my husband in the full light of day. I’m raising our children in a home built on tenderness. I get to be the proof I once went looking for and I don’t take a moment of it for granted, because so many fought and loved anyway so this life could be mine.
That is why I feel a responsibility to share our story. To keep it visible. Because representation isn’t vanity, it’s a lifeline thrown across time to the next frightened kid. And at a moment when our dignity, our families, and our very right to be ourselves are under attack in ways I never imagined I’d see again, telling the truth about our love becomes an act of hope, and of defiance.

I believe, fundamentally, that people are good. I believe we can always be better.... to each other, for each other, and through each other. I believe in basic dignity, the kind every single person deserves simply for being alive. And above all else, I believe love is the thing that outlasts the fear.

This month and every month, I will keep championing it: love, acceptance, growth, tolerance, dignity... everything we all deserve.

I am proud of the family we’ve built. I am proud of the boy who never stopped hoping.

I am proud to be q***r.

06/02/2026

Happy ! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Pride is a time to celebrate our identities and the strength that comes with living openly and authentically, even when the world doesn’t always make it easy.

Celebrate Pride with Mental Health America at the links below. There, you’ll find LGBTQIA+ mental health resources, shareable social media graphics, and more.

mhanational.org/pride

mhanational.org/lgbtq

06/01/2026

Happy Pride! Whether or not you are able to be out fully where you are, celebrate yourself and your loved ones with love and joy!

05/28/2026

Lisa not only describes the grief journey well, but also the importance of trusting your inner compass and your body’s wisdom for making important decisions.

I tried everything from gong baths to junk food and intermittent crying as I attempted to deal with my grief. Nothing helped – until I started tuning in to what my body was telling me