Align Wellness

Align Wellness Tending the gap and the overlap: clinical therapy and healing arts for clients, practitioners, and community.

Our providers:

Melanie Storrusten, LCSW - owner and therapist, providing therapy for deeper healing, specializing in working with folks healing after trauma, LGB and trans clients, those seeking to reaffirm their connection with their bodies that may feel disrupted due to stress and trauma, illness or injury, body image concerns, or all of the ways society teaches us not to listen to our truest innermost voice. Melanie utilizes yoga, meditation, breath practices, reiki, and EMDR as well as traditional talk-therapy techniques. Visit http://www.alignwellnessatl.com to read about our other clinicians.

Your therapist prescribes a double dose of oxytocin today. (this is really the only prescription they allow us to write)...
03/31/2026

Your therapist prescribes a double dose of oxytocin today. (this is really the only prescription they allow us to write). Willard and Hillard (Hilly) are happy to oblige. 👯

Kaleigh McAfee, AMFT in her other role as cat mama.

*as helpful as we know it was, this post is not therapy and our cat prescription does not constitute a therapeutic relationship. However if you'd like us to be your therapist, visit our website.

Rage Becomes Her - A women's book club with Kaleigh McAfee, AMFT and IFS therapist discussing *Rage Becomes Her: The Po...
03/30/2026

Rage Becomes Her - A women's book club with Kaleigh McAfee, AMFT and IFS therapist discussing *Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger* by Soraya Chemaly

This virtual space is for women to wonder together about how we have been and how we can be in relationship with the parts of us that are enraged - in ourselves and in other women. The group will include: a guided discussion of the book, somatic and parts-exploring work to build relationship with our own rage parts, and group sharing. Our goal for the group is that participants will leave with a better understanding of the ways in which your own rage parts need to be held/expressed and a plan for how you'll maintain relationship with
these parts.

The group will meet on zoom from 10:00am - 12:00pm on Sunday April 19th. Registration is required and space is limited. The cost of the group is a minimum donation of $9, with a portion of proceeds plus our own donation going to support the Augusta, GA (Kaleigh's local community) Sexual Assault Response Center. This group is for peer support and educational purposes and is not a therapy group.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1984656717668

I'm finding inspiration in the work, writings, speeches, and songs of Civil Rights leaders and other ancestors in the st...
03/26/2026

I'm finding inspiration in the work, writings, speeches, and songs of Civil Rights leaders and other ancestors in the struggle for liberation.

I remember watching the faith of Palestinians - seeing all of the images that all of us have seen (and are still seeing), hearing their cries out to God, and their dedication to their faith in the face of unspeakable horrors - and being awe-struck. The Palestinian people have endured for so long under such oppressive conditions - they have a word for that perseverence found in the strength of one another: sumud. I do not have such a word in my lived vocabulary.

Comparatively to the suffering happening around the world and even to others here in the US, I have not yet suffered to this degree, for any amount of time. It is a privilege and an incomprehensible grace, indeed. And it has left me without the skills needed for a perseverant hope. The cost of my healthcare (and my everything) has gone up. I am worried about things I have always been able to take for granted. I have seen awful things happening on my screens. And already, my inclination is towards despair. I say this with as little self-judgment as I'm able. But I know that I must learn how to continue to hope. And I can learn about that from all the people who have had to do it before me.

A quote from Angela Davis that's been heavily on my mind for the past few years: "You have to act as if it were possible to radically change the world. And you have to do it all the time."

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How are the therapists coping? is a series of posts where our therapists share their most impactful coping skills during times of non-stop chaos and crisis. We'd love to hear yours, too. May it be of benefit. ❤️ 🙏

03/24/2026

As I type this, the day and night are perfectly balanced: equinox. By the time it reaches you, the scales are tilting towards day: more light, more warmth. May we find ways to gather up the goodness; let’s scoop it up in our hands and pour it into our hearts. May the spring bring growth, abundance, hope, and love. May the light continue to shine on all the places that so desperately need a light shined. May we be willing to witness and respond to what is revealed in the light. May the World give us equal measure (or abundantly more) strength, grace, sturdiness, justice, restoration, and healing that can come from reckoning (but know that we must also reckon). May we learn to trust and lean into that healing kind of reckoning. Give us the integrity to stand and face what we might like to run from. May we all learn more about sovereignty: our own, and accepting that of others. May the sacred continue to find beautiful ways to shine its sunbeams through the clouds - y’all know that pretty way it does? Whenever we see those crepuscular rays, let’s put our hands on our hearts and all agree that it means the light is whispering a little promise: “I’m still here.”

Hope, what a brutal thingOh the way it stingsComing down like rain upon your desert sands ..Sometimes hope is hard, some...
03/24/2026

Hope, what a brutal thing
Oh the way it stings
Coming down like rain upon your desert sands ..
Sometimes hope is hard, sometimes hope hurts. We love this song by Carsie Blanton because it speaks to both the agony and the beauty, and the necessity of hope. We love lots of songs by Carsie, and we bet you might too.

We'll be sharing some art, poetry, and music that inspires us along the way. Artists and art are so important in times such as these. Won't you make some?

"All of Western medicine is built on getting rid of pain, which is not the same as healing. Healing is actually the capa...
03/20/2026

"All of Western medicine is built on getting rid of pain, which is not the same as healing. Healing is actually the capacity to hold pain."

Building capacity to hold our pain (and/or the pain of others) doesn't mean that we force ourselves to bear it as it overwhelms us. It means that first, we find ways within our own bodies and in relationship with others to access more feelings of safety and stability. Sometimes this alone can create a kind of rebound anxiety - feeling safe can feel like letting our guard down. So we stay here as long as we need to re-establish trust. If we've been pushing ourselves past what feels safe for a long time, this trust can take time to rebuild. For some of us, it is so natural to want to rush this step - bring on the hard part, no pain, no gain, let's heal this already! Here's the good news, though - this already *is* powerful healing work. Underline powerful. It may not feel like much, but to simply stop pushing ourselves into unsafety is huge. Even if this is "all" you ever did, it could be enough.

I'm shopping small and local. Even though it may have little impact on Big Billionaires, I feel powerful when I withhold...
03/19/2026

I'm shopping small and local.

Even though it may have little impact on Big Billionaires, I feel powerful when I withhold my money from them, no matter how convenient they've made buying their garbage. And spending my money instead at a local small business does have a big impact for the people in my community. I can choose to support businesses and people who share my values or to make a small effort towards repairing harm. I make eye contact, and maybe even conversation with a human when I shop small. I have to arrange my day differently to have more time to complete these errands, and a little more spaciousness is a wonderful thing. Maybe I'll stop for a local coffee while I'm out. And I feel a small bit less complicit in the harms caused by exploitive business practices and undue power these mega-corporations and their owners wield.

A couple of my favorite gems since I've started making a more concerted effort to shop local: On Thursdays, my busiest workdays for meetings, I stop by a sweet little sourdough baker's farm stand in the morning and then in the afternoons I go pick up my order from the community farmer's market at a little seafood shop, where I might pick up dinner. If I really wanted to make it the best day ever, on my lunch break I walk down to the locally owned bookstore or library and stop at our coffeeshop or chocolatier. If this isn't good for my mental health, I do not know what is.

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How are the therapists coping? is a series of posts where our therapists share their most impactful coping skills during times of non-stop chaos and crisis. We'd love to hear yours, too. May it be of benefit. ❤️ 🙏

And now, a cute animal break. ✨️For your mental health.✨️ Meet Winnie and Flopsie, best doggos of Matthew Shugart, LPC.
03/17/2026

And now, a cute animal break. ✨️For your mental health.✨️

Meet Winnie and Flopsie, best doggos of Matthew Shugart, LPC.

03/14/2026

Align therapists Matthew Shugart, Julie Lane, and Kaleigh McAfee at the latest networking mixer, generously hosted by . As a co-founder and now retired board member, I'm biased, but the LGBTQ Therapist Resource is the best fun you'll have at a professional event, and they're also how I've made some of the most meaningful and reciprocal relationships in Atlanta. I spy Orion Crook and Debra Dantzler... ❤️ looking for James Kingman...

Laura Joplin, LMSW discusses her work in the intersection of somatics and neurodivergence: "The majority of my client po...
03/13/2026

Laura Joplin, LMSW discusses her work in the intersection of somatics and neurodivergence: "The majority of my client population is neurodivergent
(ADHD, Autism, etc.), and I serve these folks using a somatic approach.
Somatic support for neurodiversity is both unique and impactful because
it does two important things at once: it allows us to experience
ourselves exactly as we are, because we don’t need to be fixed or
altered… and it empowers us to become more aware of our body cues and
our specific support needs, and feel resourced enough to meet them."

Address

3548 Habersham At Northlake
Tucker, GA
30084

Telephone

+14044012587

Website

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Our Story

We provide holistic and integrative mental health treatment encompassing body, mind, and soul by utilizing conventional and alternative methods to facilitate connection with your innate and free-flowing capacity for deeper healing. Our intention is that our work would contribute to a world where we all know ourselves more fully, care for ourselves more freely, take up space more confidently, and live more joyfully and abundantly from a place of purpose, compassion, and grace.

Align Wellness is filled with compassionate and skilled clinicians ready to meet you where you are, and to walk alongside you on your way to where you want to be. Whether you are looking for traditional therapy, deeper trauma therapy, yoga and meditation instruction, energy work, or holistic psychiatric medication support, we hope that one of our providers will be a good fit for meeting your needs. Read more about our services and reach out to connect about the type of work that feels most resonant to you.

For the traditionalist

Align Wellness Solutions specializes in providing therapy services to address issues of stress, anxiety, and trauma. One of our core beliefs is that this kind of deeper healing happens beneath the realm of cognition and the analytical (our over-thinking minds) - that healing lies in the domain of emotion, energy, and our physical bodies. So our work is based on restoring your connection and relationship to these parts of yourself.