When Healing Needs Room to Breathe
For many women, anxiety, grief, and trauma don’t show up loudly.
They weave themselves into everyday life shaping decisions, relationships, and the way the nervous system moves through the world.
Jill Lees sits with women in these spaces.
Based in Arvada, Colorado, Jill is a mental health therapist and the founder of Meer Soul Counseling.
Her work centers on supporting women navigating anxiety, loss, and trauma through evidence-based therapy practices that are both structured and deeply human.
But what matters most to Jill isn’t technique alone.
It’s freedom.
Choosing Autonomy For Herself and Her Clients
Before opening her own practice, Jill worked in medical social work inside large systems where care often came with layers of red tape, limitations, and constraints.
She knew two things clearly.
She wanted to earn what her work was worth.
And she wanted to help people without having to fight a system to do it well.
Private practice offered both but it also required starting from zero.
No group practice.
No built-in referrals.
No roadmap.
Just a vision and a steep learning curve.
Building From the Ground Up
Starting Meer Soul Counseling meant learning everything, all at once.
How to build a practice from scratch.
How to move from institutional work into entrepreneurship.
How to hold clinical depth while also becoming a business owner.
It wasn’t just about therapy anymore.
It was about systems, decisions, boundaries, and sustainability.
And Jill met that challenge the same way she meets her clients steadily, thoughtfully, and with a willingness to learn as she goes.
The Reality of Care and Cost
One of the ongoing tensions in her work lives at the intersection of access and value.
At the beginning of each year, when insurance plans reset and out-of-pocket costs rise, she sees how financial pressure impacts people’s ability to seek support even when they need it most.
Building a practice with more private-pay clients is part of creating stability not only for the business, but for the kind of care she wants to offer.
Care that isn’t rushed.
Care that isn’t dictated by insurance limitations.
Care that allows space for real healing.
Expanding the Vision
Jill’s work doesn’t stop at the therapy room.
She’s in the process of building community alongside her practice creating a listserv for therapists and hosting monthly networking events to foster connection, collaboration, and support in a field that can often feel isolating.
It’s an extension of her values.
Healing happens in relationship.
Growth happens in community.
And no one does this work alone, clients or clinicians.
A Practice With Soul
Meer Soul Counseling was built out of a desire for integrity for work that aligns with worth, values, and impact.
Jill’s path reflects a quiet courage: leaving structure to create something more spacious, more honest, and more sustainable.
At Reignelle, we honour women like Jill, those who build not just practices but containers for healing that are rooted in autonomy, care, and trust.