Today we’d like to introduce you to Tara Williams.
Tara, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Walk us through your story; how you started and how you got to where you are today; as brief or detailed.
My decision to start my private practice happened very fast but also took two decades in the making. After a decade of serving the US Air Force in 2012 I felt led to pursue my career in counseling psychology. This was also when I began my own recovery journey healing from past trauma and a difficult mental health battle with roots of codependency. I simultaneously labored towards my licensure while also working to break down mental health stigmas in my local communities through addiction treatment centers, behavioral health organizations, ministries and private practices. I had previously served leaders of questionable moral character or sound judgment all over the world, suppressing my own creativity and passion for affecting change as I was forced to help fulfill the visions of others with less vision than myself. The last several years of maturing into a licensed professional alongside a healthy team while also claiming relative victory over many personal challenges gave me the wisdom and confidence I needed to finally believe my vision was viable, something people wanted. Something I wanted. To create a new kind of one-on-one space within the clinical world where the standard of care is as high as that of the tenets of the US Air Force; Integrity First, Service before Self, and Excellence in All We Do; where the clinical acumen is not only rooted and grounded in science but surpassed in advancement by human intuition. Where the experience doesn’t feel contrived or cliché but has the vulnerability of having coffee with a trusted confidant who only wants to help you grow. Being the kind of wounded healer that lets my clients go about their lives feeling as though their advocate is literally walking alongside them, just dying to hear how they’ve have been since their last session and eager to keep advancing on their goals with them. I wanted to give back something I didn’t feel I’ve ever had; a provider who actually cared.
I also had to get to a place where I believed I could actually create it successfully on the business side. Math has never been my friend, I literally took a remedial class called “Math” as an adult in my later years of college because it’s just not a subject that my brain is willing to learn. Marketing, however, has always been a natural talent. I could talk to you about your strengths or passions for five minutes and creatively devise an entire business model and life purpose for you within a single conversation, complete with detailed ideas for targeting the right population to advertising campaign slogans. I’ve thought up these ideas for fun with many people over the years, including for myself. My ideas just stayed in my notepad. Until three years ago. I had a vision of a clinical café; a gathering place where café meet ups, local musicians, artists, recovery groups and clinical counseling could all be happening in the same venue like one giant healing conglomerate taking up real estate that might otherwise have gone to a strip mall or franchise restaurant. Images of the décor, details of the café menu, and the heart of the healing spirit of the activity inside its doors started dancing around my head until I couldn’t contain it. My husband and I went back and forth on a name and came up with “Restoring Grounds.” I bought the domain name and there it sat, an idea in my notepad, for three years. I even let the domain expire as I got tired and gave up the thought of owning my own business. In the throws of personal debt, my child’s early school activity appointments, some pet losses, and the busyness of life, it just felt too hard. I wasn’t even making it to the gym anymore, how could I establish my own business? Maybe I was not meant to be that type of person. I was almost content with day to day life working for someone else, but I was truly scared that I was 40 years old and had no real plans to accomplish this dream.
“But God”! Grateful for mid-life crises! Once I compared what I could make on my own to that of working for someone else, and researched the pathway for how to accomplish it; I became responsible for making it happen. I felt passionately obligated to become a better steward of my gifts and experience when I was finally able to see the path forward. I officially opened October 6th, 2025. Sadly our world is in dire need for counseling right now, so my calendar has been full from the first day. I have received overwhelming response to my sole social media post before even expanding any marketing efforts and have more opportunities for clients than I am capable of serving by myself. My hope is that Restoring Grounds can grow into the vision I’ve had for it from day one; I’m just waiting on God to send me the right people who want to be a part of it and grow it with me. I definitely cannot do it alone.
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?
Has it been a smooth road? If not what were some of the struggles along the way?
It took immense faith, overcoming a vast ocean of fears and self-doubts, staying up night after night planning and preparing, and an adventurous spark of ambition to move into launching my own business within a sea of other people all attempting to do the exact same thing as me. From when I incorporated until then, I spent three months preparing a new office space using only personal scraps of money I had, laboring myself over my website, hiring and working with an accounting practice, researching third party billing platforms and integrating with them, following local and national licensing laws going back and forth between work and the city departments, dragging my family into the new office every weekend to put furniture together and help decorate, personally handling the transition of each of my clients onto new platforms, everything; all to ensure a seamless, positive experience for my clients where they could walk out of their last session with me at my group practice and literally show up for their next session in a brand new place affectionately curated just for them.
It was truly the relationships I have built with my clients over the years and their faith in me as their therapist that tipped the scales, knowing that they believed in me enough to follow me into the unknown because of the value and worth their experience working with me has brought them. Not to mention my passionate desire to take control over my own days so that I can work towards focusing on the most important people in my entire life before even my clients; my family. I know that with everything I do I am setting an example for my only daughter, teaching her that when you are given a gift to give, wisdom on how to give it, and the faith to carry you through it, there leaves no excuse behind why you should not do everything it takes to deliver that gift to your world.
For now I am a one woman show. This means I take all calls, texts, emails for potential or new clients and troubleshooting issues for existing clients throughout the day while also seeing a full caseload of clients individually, and running the business side of my practice by myself. I also never take longer than a few hours to respond to anyone, including folks looking for recommendations for care I cannot give myself. I spend time each week writing referrals, sending recommendations, and helping connect people to their best treatment options if I cannot get them in soon myself. If I am going to call myself a helper, then that will be the core value I operate from when I make all of my decisions. Time and boundaries are important, and sure my efforts are monetarily valuable, but it is the culmination of all that I am that drives my success, not just with the planned transactions but in the unplanned ones. The Bible says in Hebrews 13:2 “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so some people have entertained angels without knowing it” (NIV). I will give the same effort towards a stranger to that of my highest paying client. Everyone is worthy and valuable of my time. Everyone.
I get to wake up every single day feeling as though I am beginning another day in the life of my purpose, and not dreading the idea of “going to work.” Running my own business is a seamless extension of fulfilling my life’s purpose. Helping others, with zero limitations, exactly how I believe it must be done to really, really work.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Please tell us more about your business. What should we know? What do you do, what do you specialize in? What are you known for? What sets you apart from others? What are you most proud of brand wise? What do you want our readers to know about your brand, offerings, services?
The current position of Restoring Grounds Counseling is really not that different than most single counselor practices; I have a lobby, a boutique styled small room, and we talk. You can pay using insurance or cash. We meet in person or virtually. That part is pretty simple, for now. I’m on paper a Master’s level licensed professional with personal and professional experience that I draw from. I humbly admit this model is not revolutionary. There are a lot of highly competent, qualified professionals in our area that are doing outstanding work with their clientele based on their expertise and I admire so many of them for their commitment to helping others and bridging the gaps between their pasts and their futures, helping them overcome barriers to their goals. I won’t even pretend to advertise that I’m “more different or special” than any single one of them, in fact I have learned much from several of them as well as all my own therapists who have helped me in my life! But I do believe my brand stands for something bigger than myself, and I hold my responsibility to my clients accountable to my God. I invite the Lord into the session, with or without my client’s acknowledgement or permission! Because if there is any wisdom, any knowing word, anything truly helpful that can change a person’s life, it’s very unlikely that I am going to be the sole resource for this content! An exchange happens inside my mind where I surrender my will and competence to Him, and what pours forth is often instruction and guidance I am not always quite sure I can pinpoint the exact source myself! Almost daily I say to myself, “man, that was so good, I need to listen to that!” Of course I use evidence based interventions tried and true from recognized theoretical orientation methods and effective strategies with proven track records, but I would be lying if I told you that I always 100% of the time have a plan or a procedure that I follow. Being able to be flexible to pay attention to all aspects of the counseling interaction needs in the moment, inclusive of filtered intuition and disciplined instinct, I believe are not the signs of a professional gone rogue or a mad scientist but of quite possibly a clinical mastermind who can intricately weave science and art into an individually tailored provision of care for each soul being counseled. I guess you could say this is how I would describe what I do. I would want potential clients to know that I want to help people who feel they have been circling the desert for years to find their promised lands sooner. I want to cut short the barriers to them living out their own destinies by helping them achieve greater insight and improve on their decision making and judgment skills so that they may not have to suffer any longer than they are where they are. This is not a job for me, I could return to making 6 figures as a Top Secret analyst for Department of Defense contractors like I used to following my time in the service. This is my purpose now, and whatever it is I have built, is succeeding. I do not want to be limited in what I can achieve because of money. I want to grow and build something that can intervene in the lives of hundreds or thousands so they can have a better future. I invite anyone who is interested to visit my website to learn more about my style and services.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
The biggest and most obvious trends out there in the mental health field are that of social media and AI taking over the traditional models. I know I have just “stepped in it” and am taking on something much bigger than this forum permits, but this area of the industry is both beautifully fantastic and unimaginably scary all at once. The digital world without absolute truth is the perfect gift for a species who strives to thrive but the most dangerous curse to a species who has no self control or willingness to apply context to outcomes they desire immediately. I say this with no intention whatsoever of coming off as intimidated because of my line of work, (something I will never be!), but out of genuine fear for the next generation having access to immediate content that is personally attuned to the pleasing of self. Principle 1 of the faith-based healing program Celebrate Recovery states you must “Realize I’m not God”, supporting the call to humility as being the first step before achieving genuine change in one’s life. The way our digital world is trending is attempting to bring healing ideas to hurting people faster, something that is thankfully happening, but it is also going so far as to permitting boundless measures of interventions to instantly self soothe without any process for character refinement or development of personal insight. If everyone is right, then no one is right. And as the saying goes, “you can either be right, or you can have connection with others.” I have even heard of an app children download where it “likes” your posts instantly hundreds of times, somehow improving your self esteem even while you know you have programmed its intentions to do so! I boldly project that the biggest shift we are going to see in mental health due to under-regulated technologies or processes is a universally acceptable method for diagnosing and resolving self, thereby eliminating the need for anyone to look to anyone else for help. I have been astounded by the majesty of the functions of technology available and grateful for some of the assistance I have received. But there are inherent flaws rooted in the lack of soul within their design that are deeply disturbing. They are a marvelous substitute for computation of some of life’s most tedious needs and are a helpful tool to be used wisely and with caution, but due to problematic discernment of factual information being applied in the correct contexts, they are and will always be counterfeit to the human brain, even if human brains have labored to design them. Independently journaling your emotions on an app to self-regulate and improve your intentional communication skills is one thing, but think of the implications if we were all encouraged to decide for ourselves whether or not we are not in fact an addict or Bipolar and that we are deserving of own irrational desires being met by our own means because of “unmet emotional childhood needs”, for example. As I’ve been told by professionals who have gone before me, “you are not being paid for 50 minutes of your time. You are being paid for your 4 collegiate degrees, 20 years of education, over 10 years of supervised professional experience, and 50 minutes of your time.” I would add to that list, empathy and grace. You cannot program an earnest therapist to genuinely provide this for you, no matter how much you pay them. This is love given by people, for other people. Michael Scott from The Office said it best; “People will never go out of business.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.restoringgroundscounseling.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tarahwilliamslpc/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarawilliamslpc/
