Today we’d like to introduce you to Kim DeRamus Lareau.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Growing up with two parents in the medical field, I found myself drawn to helping professions and wanting to learn more about the human body and helping people. As a middle school/high school athlete, I thought that passion would lead me towards a career in exercise and sports science. Honestly, mental health wasn’t on my radar as a job profession when I started college.
During my freshman year of college at UGA, I started to meet with a counselor through the encouragement of my parents; I was that tough client at first who did not have any interest being in the room (imagine arms crossed and not wanting to say much). But overtime, as I built a relationship with my counselor, I started to recognize that I had experienced anxiety in lots of different ways throughout my life. Most people, including myself, probably would not have labeled me as someone who experienced anxiety, but it was there under the surface and in some external ways. Anxiety had driven me to perfectionism, people pleasing, high expectations, and more. Counseling became a safe place to be honest without judgement, to learn more about myself and relationships, to be able to label experiences that I had as what they were and learn how I made sense in the context of lived experiences.
College was a pivotal time in life for so many reasons. I found true and authentic friendships that I could be myself in. I walked alongside best friends as they sought out treatment for substance use and eating disorders; during those seasons, I found myself reading and wanting to learn as much as I could about psychology. I started volunteering and serving with youth, unhoused individuals, and those who had experienced sexual trauma and exploitation. Through these experiences and a huge decision to shift from studying exercise and sports science to psychology, I found myself drawn towards pursuing a masters in professional counseling to gain more training in how to serve those populations. Fast forward a few years post-graduate school. By that point, I had already worked at UGA in their counseling center, moved back to Atlanta to help support a new young adult program for girls who had been trafficked, and was working a few hours each week at a group counseling center.
It was at that group counseling center that I connected with a few counselors who were newer graduates of Richmont Graduate University (my alma mater) and conversations began to take shape around starting a satellite location in Atlanta of a non-profit counseling based in New Mexico. In 2013, I helped launch Formation Counseling Services first Georgia location through partnering with our church, Grace Midtown. The season of working and serving at Formation Counseling Center has had a huge impact on me as a person and a clinician. I was with Formation Counseling until November 2017. During that season, I was able to help administratively and clinically create a group counseling center to serve the Atlanta community through offering accessibility by being able to slide our fees down to as low as one dollar. This model allowed me to reconnect to passions and opportunities that I had been a part of in college and through volunteering but in a professional way. I was able see individual counseling clients, and we developed partnerships with tons of other non-profits in the city to provide professional trainings and counseling services. Formation and the team there became a family and an amazing place to grow up through my young/late twenties in the city personally and professionally. As a clinician, especially in those early years of my career, I specialized in supporting individuals hoping to understand and heal from trauma, anxiety and depression, navigating life transitions, grief and loss, and self-esteem. I gained additional trainings in EMDR, Trauma-Focused CBT, grief work, and attachment.
In 2017, I left Formation Counseling to work for a few years at a large group counseling practice that allowed me more opportunities to supervise and train newer clinicians and continue seeing clients. During the session at this group practice, the dream of Steady Hope, LLC had time to grow and begin to take shape in my mind. One of my favorite personal and professional stories from that time period was when I was tasked to create a six-week dating course by the counseling practice. I ironically met my husband via Match on a snow day. In our early season of dating, I was deeply studying and researching concepts in dating like how to avoid falling in love with a jerk (ha ha). Thankfully, he wasn’t a jerk, and we got married in early 2019. He works in non-profit, and we have shared passions for seeing individuals feel more whole and gain tools to care for all parts of themselves. During 2020, when we knew we wanted to start a family and I was working essentially on my own at home due to the pandemic, it felt like the right season to launch Steady Hope, LLC as a group mental health counseling practice. So in January 2021, at 6 months pregnant with my first, I opened the doors in Decatur, GA, and hired my first associate level counselor. I knew from the early days that I wanted to create a practice that was steady and hope-filled for clients and clinicians. I have a deep desire that our clients feel more seen, supported, and known when they work with a counselor on our team. I also want the clinicians on our team to find a sweet spot of supporting themselves and their families and having opportunities to serve individuals for whom they have a deep passion: the refugee community, for example.
Our values:
👉 Steadiness – To be a grounded and steady presence in the therapy room, we practice this with each other and in our individual lives.
👉 Authenticity – To show up and encourage authenticity in our clients, we first seek to pursue it within our own stories.
👉 Excellence – We strive to provide clinically excellent and informed care as we receive ongoing trainings, consultation, and continuing education.
👉 Collaborative Community – We see therapy as a partnership: with our clients during a session, within our team as we support one another, and in our local community as we share mental health resources.
👉 Holistic Care – We see individuals as whole people with many interconnected parts (mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional), all of which are considered throughout the therapy journey.
Over the last 4.5 years, I have personally had two kids and grown our team from myself to 10 clinicians. It’s been a learning curve and had it’s challenges for sure, but I absolutely love leading our team, supporting clinicians, meeting with my own clients, and building relationships in the community!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not at all. There are parts that have seemed smooth from the outside but have been bumpy inside. A few examples of struggles: being a young single 20-something building a caseload at a counseling practice meant that I needed to have side jobs to help cover expenses, which meant that I worked a lot. During sessions of building and growing Steady Hope, I have had a few months here and there where I have needed to keep all the income in the business instead of taking home a standard paycheck due to shifts in the group practices or caseloads. Growing a group practice with young babies can be a challenge and needs a lot of flexibility and creativity around how to make it work. I truly believe that experiencing the struggles and adversity have strengthened me as a leader and led to so much intentionality in this current season of Steady Hope.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I am the owner of Steady Hope, a group mental health practice that offers individual, couples, and group counseling services in Decatur, GA, and virtually throughout the state of GA, FL, and SC. Steady Hope strives to create a safe place to face the present and live with hope for the future. With the goal of helping clients feel understood, supported, and empowered, our compassionate therapy services for teens, adults, and families provide the care and tools they need to create meaningful change. Together, we’ll work toward a stronger, more fulfilling future that feels authentic to them.
Steady Hope, LLC is a woman- and mother-owned practice. Currently, we have a team of 10 incredible clinicians who value being trauma-informed and focused on holistic interventions. We place a high value on trying to understand our clients’ stories and how experiences have impacted and shaped them into the individuals they find themselves in now. Through holistic tools like integrating body-based interventions, exploring values, and at times connecting individuals to other helping professionals like nutritionists, physical therapists, and psychiatrists we help our clients grow in compassion, understanding, and tools to feel more whole.
As an aspect of holistic support and care, our team has special training and experience to integrate faith and spirituality into sessions based on the level of desire of clients. If clients desire to integrate Christianity or other faith expressions into sessions or if they want to explore how hurt or early experiences in the church has impacted them today, then our team is happy to do that.
I am super proud of the team that I have built who truly embodies a passion for getting to know individuals in the community, serving all humans, and have desires to learn. The women on the team at Steady Hope help create spaces for clients to exhale and feel seen. We have intentionally decorated our office spaces with that desire of hoping that clients can feel more grounded and catch their breath.
Our team specializes in providing counseling services for anxiety, depression, trauma, navigating all life transitions, grief and loss, relationships, perinatal mental health, ADHD, helping professionals, professionals, ministry leaders, and college students. We are trained in counseling modalities such as EFT, EMDR, IFS, CBT, ACT, Somatic Interventions, and Attachment frameworks. Clients can select a provider who ranging from the ages of 23-38 who would identify as single, married, and married with kids, based on their preference.
I am proud of what I have been able to create in the last 4.5 years while also raising two young babies. I am proud of the beauty of our brand and relationships we have been able to establish within the greater Atlanta area.
Any big plans?
Great question! We are looking for a bigger counseling space to settle into so that our now larger team can meet with more clients. I have dreams and desires to continue expanding our partnerships with non-profits and other organizations throughout the city where our team has opportunities to host workshops, lead groups, and provide individual counseling services. We already have partnerships with non-profits supporting refugees, accessible apartment communities, ministries, and a Postpartum International GA chapter. I want to continue exploring how our practice can create accessibility while also being a steady workplace that works hard to avoid clinician burnout.
Personally, I have a dream of launching a coaching business to help support other providers interested in opening their own counseling practices. I specifically would like to coach other women or moms who are trying to find the balance between their passion and being a sustainable business.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.steadyhope.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steady.hope/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SteadyHopeATL
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/steady-hope
Image Credits
Jeremy Pentsil
