Spinelly Coaching sessions are a blend of counseling, psychosocial support, allyship, and empowerment utilized by founder Charity Smith after a career in clinical and community social work, studies in human rights, feminism, and music therapy. 

I identify as a queer person who is neurodiverse, cisgender, two-parts tomboy one-part fem and polyamorous. I practice intersectional feminism to the best of my ability in my daily life because our queer bodies are ineherintly poltical. Prior to living in Berlin, I could not be openly queer or express parts of my true idenity as I lived in a small rural community in Canada that was and continues to be openly homophobic and racisit. It was not until moving to Berlin that I began to full idenify as queer, because I felt like I had found a safe place to do so and I have created my chosen family with other queer folk.

In my own searches for therapy I struggled to find someone who I connected to, someone who understood elements of queerness, kink, and polyamory and I frequently felt disheartened. This experience has lead me creating Spinelly Coaching.  I recognize that queer, gender-diverse, and other alternative folk often struggle to find informed counselors or therapists.  Seeking support from someone completely unaware or uninformed about various lifestyle choices or identities can lead to really unproductive or even harmful sessions.  I want to help meet this need by focusing my skills on the communities to which I belong. I have chosen to focus on supporting folks who are exploring polyamory, open relationships, non-monogamy, and other nontraditional ways of creating healthy relationships and chosen families.

Spinelly Coaching is a space for you if:

• You have ever felt like you don’t fully fit into the status quo or society’s norms.
• You are a queer person who has felt alienated from your biological family and are working to find new ways to feel a sense of belonging and community.
• You’ve worked with other therapists or gone to workshops on relationships, communication and related topics because you care about this area in your life but nothing has fit because the way you love is bigger than the box society is trying to fit you in!
• You have been told that family can only be those created by blood or marriage but this doesn’t resonate with you. 
• You are exploring non-monogamy for the first time and need help with developing healthy communication strategies, boundary setting, and learning to identify and address feelings of jealousy, inadequacy, and insecurity.
• You are new to kink and needed some guidance about where to start, how to be safe, and how to handle negotiation and boundaries around consent.

Every story, human, and relationship is unique, and I work with you to create a customized program that fits your needs.  I offer counseling and coaching to individuals, groups, and family constellations of all sorts both in person and online.  Above all, I offer  a warm and empathetic heart and an open mind grounded in a professional and academic background in social work as well as lived experiences in sexuality- and gender-diverse communities.