Mary Sharp, LMSW

Mary Sharp (she/her/hers) has been a Clinical Social Worker for over 20 years. Mary identifies
as Lesbian of mixed heritage. She considers herself a life-long learner and happily attributes
her greatest skills to the people she has served. Mary’s background is in working with a wide
range of ages and needs, in group work, cognitive behavior, mindfulness, behavior activation
and self compassion. Mary has been trained in trauma treatment and has experience
addressing stresses/trauma related to racial, gender and sexual identity injustice and
dissonance. Mary is skilled in addressing relationship struggles, grief and loss, emotional
dysregulation, stress, anxiety, depression,autistic spectrum challenges, self-esteem, historical
trauma and crises of faith. Mary enjoys mentoring and seeks to offer supervision to new
professionals interested in this very important work.

Having been a teenage mom on aid, Mary holds a particular passion and interest in internal and
external resource development. Mary takes an eclectic approach to care, tailoring aspects of
evidence based practices to the individual and the context of their lives. Mary works to facilitate
a transcendent respect, honor and regard for the therapeutic relationship and the self. Mary
believes in all efforts to create peace/acceptance within and therefore within the world. Mary
believes in the power of meditation and contemplative approaches to self examination and
environment.

Prior to receiving her degree Mary worked in several domestic violence/sexual assault programs
and safe homes, as advocate, counselor, safe home coordinator and family services supervisor.
Mary provided individual and group therapeutic services to students at Grand Valley State
University in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina while
coordinating and serving multicultural, diversity, equity and social justice initiatives, training
doctoral and master level students, staff and the university community at large. She has
extensive experience in crisis response, debriefing, suicide prevention and intervention. Before
the universities, Mary worked as an emergency room social worker. Mary Sharp has extensive
experience working with families and children via an infant mental health home based program
and later addressing at risk children and their families affected by HIV and substance abuse.
Mary has served in early childhood development programs as well.