Henrico Small Business Spotlight: Healing Circle Counseling

Linda Zaffram created Healing Circle Counseling because she saw a need for compassionate clinicians. After 13 years of growth, the company continues to extend its arms to clients and embrace the community at large.

Zaffram first started Healing Circle Counseling as a solo practitioner on Feb. 9, 2012. But the self-proclaimed “huge extrovert” grew lonely and saw the value in having colleagues. Fast forward to today, and Healing Circle Counseling has about two dozen employees across two locations – one in Richmond and one in Midlothian. 

Zaffram is a therapist who’s “walked the walk.” And, sadly, she knows what it's like to have a negative therapy experience. That’s why the licensed clinical social worker and her team are determined to be an active part of your healing process. 

“We don't want anyone to feel alone,” Zaffram said. “You’ll be seen, you'll be heard, you'll be nurtured here.”

Zaffram’s goal with Healing Circle is all-encompassing. She wants her employees to empower their clients in their healing journeys though “heart-centered, evidence-based, compassionate care.” The tagline for the company is simple: “Healing one day at a time.”

“You can't rush it, there's no fast track to it,” Zaffram said. “It takes everybody their own time to get to the place where they feel like they've done their work and are feeling good about where they are in their healing journey.”

Healing Circle Counseling offers medication management and mental health therapy across a wide range of specialties for children as young as 3 and adults of all ages. The clinicians, as a whole, are equipped to work with pretty much anything: depression and anxiety, relationships, substance abuse disorders, domestic violence cases, neurodevelopmental disorders, caregiver burnout, self esteem and life transitions, to name a fragment of the specialties. 

“We have a pretty eclectic and robust practice where we can see pretty much anyone who is looking for someone to see,” Zaffram said. “And we do serve the LGBTQ community as well.”

A few of Zaffram’s specialties are perinatal mood disorders, perinatal loss and fertility issues. She became well versed in these spaces after struggling to find support following a traumatic birthing experience.

“If I'm a therapist and this is the care, then people who can't find resources are getting even less than this,” she remembered thinking. “So, I got training.”

Zaffram became a birth doula and got breastfeeding counseling training to “be able to provide the best type of perinatal therapy [she] could.” Working with women in the birthing stages of life led Zaffram to even more realizations that impacted her trajectory as a therapist.

“There was a lot of loss and miscarriage and later trimester losses that I was dealing with,” Zaffram said. “I also found that people had a lot of fertility issues.”

Determined to better serve her clients, Zaffram got certified in grief counseling by the MISS Foundation and took a postgraduate course on helping people with fertility struggles. Seeing the lack of resources for women in the perinatal community was another reason Zaffram decided to expand her practice and hire others who specialized in these areas.

“I was linked to all the hospitals in the area as someone who specialized in perinatal mood disorders, and I was so full,” Zaffram said. “I couldn't say no to a mom on the phone crying or just being like, ‘I can't find anybody.’

“So, that was one of the reasons I grew.”

Zaffram sees fewer patients nowadays, but her passion for working within the perinatal space remains.

“Perinatal mood disorders affects the whole family – not just mom, but dad and the children,” Zaffram said. “And so I love working with that population.”

Therapy and psychiatric services are at the core of Healing Circle Counseling, but the practice has plenty of other offerings. They do speaking engagements, business consulting, licensure supervision for supervisees in social work and residents in counseling and group therapy.

Group therapy opportunities include Mindfulness Based Childbirth & Parenting (MBCP) classes, as well as yoga classes. One of the most unique offerings is RAGEYoga. The “rage” in RAGEYoga stands for Radical, Authentic, Genuine Emotion, and this untraditional yoga class incorporates music, unicorn horns and the occasional curse word. 

“It's not chaotic like you would think RAGEYoga would be,” Zaffram, a certified RAGEYoga instructor, said. “It really is about just being your authentic self, coming with your emotions, letting them out.

“Not everybody wants to sit around and be zen and kumbaya and be quiet. So, I think it just attracts a different type of yoga person.”

Group therapy courses are offered throughout the year, and interested attendees can learn more about timing and availability by following Healing Circle Counnseling’s social media channels, calling the practice or emailing hello@healingcirclecounseling.com. 

You also might want to follow Healing Circle’s socials for updates on some of Zaffram’s community outreach efforts – one of her “favorite parts” of the business. 

“As a social worker, that's one of the things that I feel like we can do, is give back in the ways we can,” Zaffram said.

In the past, they’ve done a walk for perinatal mood disorders, collected donations for Backpacks for the Homeless, collected donations for Sanctuary Rescue and hosted Cookies with Santa and Frosty. The latter is an annual event that began in honor of Zaffram’s father, who always dressed up as Santa when she was a child.

“We have someone dress as Santa and Frosty, for those who don't celebrate Christmas,” Zaffram said. “You can bring your family … and you can come take pictures on your phone or with your camera for free, and then you have cookies and milk with Santa.

“This is sort of my homage to my dad and probably my favorite event that we do every year.”

Zaffram’s latest community engagement event is the “Annual Diaper & Formula Drive” in support of Urban Baby Beginnings – a Virginia non-profit on a mission “to reduce adverse outcomes and isolation experienced by families during the prenatal, postpartum and early childhood years.”

Now through May 5, Healing Circle Counseling is collecting diapers of all sizes, baby wipes and certain sealed, unexpired Similac baby formulas. Donations can be dropped off at the Henrico and Midlothian offices from Monday to Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

If you want to learn more about Healing Circle Counseling check out their website, join their newsletter, or follow along on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. In addition, the company is in the process of creating a YouTube channel with videos that highlight their clinicians and share accessible mental health content.

You should also keep an eye out on socials for the upcoming announcement of a new mascot – an inclusive and cute symbol for Healing Circle to use in promoting mental health awareness.

“We have a little mascot we're gonna use and hopefully make some books for kids out of it,” Zaffram said. “Like the mascot goes to therapy, the mascot has anxiety.

“It's a they/them, and so everyone can identify with the mascot that we've chosen.”

No matter how you engage with Healing Circle Counseling, just know Zaffram and her team are honored to serve you.

“I'm so lucky because we really have a phenomenal group of clinicians who show up every day, who come to work, who believe in the work that we're doing, who want to give back to the community with the events that we do. . . and just are in the space of really making a difference,” Zaffram said. “This is my swan song, and this is my legacy. So, I'm just honored that we get to be this big in the community.”

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