Local StoriesDecember 27, 2023

Meet Katie Smith

Local Stories

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Katie Smith. Katie was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Dana Holliday.

Katie, can you walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’m one of those rare individuals who always knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with couples and, as one of my friend’s describes it, “get paid to talk about sex all day”.

I was always fascinated by the relationships of my peers and by my own romantic pulls and coupleships. I wanted so badly to understand why we partner, why partnership dynamics are so complex, why the hurts and joys are felt so deeply….. I recall being about 13 or 14 and seeing an episode of Talk Sex with Sue and all I could think was, “I want to be her when I grow up”. In high school, I became a peer counselor and also started volunteering for Planned Parenthood to learn more about the sexual side of relationships. When it came time for college, the choice of a Psychology Major was obvious and I knew I wanted to get my doctorate but first, I needed to add to my CV. That first Master’s Degree led me to Boston, where I met my partner, Dan. He was by my side through all the stress of my program and, when I started my doctorate in Philadelphia, he came with me (he once called me “a girl worth moving to Philly for” and I still love the compliment).

5 years and two more degrees later, I finally made my way back to North Carolina to start practicing as a Couples and Sex Therapist with a group in Raleigh called Awakenings. We settled into Durham, renting a home only a few houses down from our dear friends.

Then, COVID. It’s the experience so many had: you begin to question, you start to have deeper conversations about the future, the path you’ve set out, what it looks like, etc. For Dan and I, we kept coming back to the idea of space, the need for breathing room. This need was quickly exacerbated by the fact that our second dog, Merle, is a Newfoundland and at 3 months old was already well past our rental’s weight limit. So, we started looking for acreage, which brought us to Oxford, NC.

I’ve been working primarily from home doing telehealth so the idea of home took more and more of my off-work hours focus. We went from a small mostly concrete backyard to 10 acres, and all of our time and energy has been directed to making the house our home. We’ve immersed ourselves in our land, in connecting with it, and creating our own little homestead. We have 16 chickens now and plan to sell the eggs come spring. We’ve planted endless flowers, roses, and a small orchard. We’re actually now in process of starting a small flower farm. After growing a little cutting garden just for myself and feeling how healing it was, we knew we had to share what we are growing. It has been completely transformative to us to move to this property. We are more connected with each other and more connected with ourselves than we’ve ever been. As we are slowly cultivating the land, we are also slowly re-doing the inside of the home one DIY project at a time. Making it ours and challenging ourselves along the way.

Please tell us more about your practice.
Awakenings specializes in both couple’s and sex therapy and we use an approach called Emotionally Focused Couple’s therapy. In EFT, we work to help partners understand how we all want to be close and connected but we want it in different proportions. We also respond differently when we are in distress and feeling hurt: some of us want more closeness, check in often, and when distressed, their worry pushes them to pursue repair. Others need a bit more space, want to keep the peace, and when distressed, worry they are failing and will pull more away. That cycle feeds on itself and drives couple’s apart. A key part of my job is helping client’s understand and see their cycle–and how it plays out both inside and outside of the bedroom. At Awakenings, we look at the emotional and the sexual cycle. This combination of EFT and sex therapy is incredible potent as it allows us to address the key needs for both partners: we help build the emotional closeness one partner needs while also addressing the sexual disconnect that hurts the other partner so much. I have the pleasure of not only seeing couple’s weekly but at Awakenings, we also offer intensives. Intensives are 12 hour sessions conducted over the space of 2-3 days where we are able to fully dive in and really dig deep in that concentrated period of time .This allows couple’s to make much quicker progress and also gives us an opportunity to address some of the larger hurts like affairs. It’s exhausting but so powerful to have that much time with one couple and the work we’re able to do is always really incredible. I absolutely love working with couple’s everyday, working to help bring clarity to the ways that we try so hard to protect ourselves and our partnership, but how so often, those very moves are the ones that unintentionally create distance. It is one of the most wonderful experiences when the couple’s I work with can start to rewrite the narrative: to shift from, “you don’t care enough to talk to me” to “I didn’t know the words were so hard for you to find” and feel their upset and hurt lessen and empathy increase.

So, as we mentioned to our audience earlier, you were introduced to us by Dana Holliday and we really admire them and what they’ve built. For folks who might not be as familiar, can you tell them a bit about your experience with Dana.
I found Dana after an Instagram deep dive on the hashtag landscape mural. So, thank you, technology!!

We had been (and still are!) in the process of decorating our home and I knew our dining need a fully wrap around mural. I had the vision so clearly in my mind: that old farmhouse feel, the statement of the floor to ceiling mural, the muted colors….. I spent months scouring the internet for wall paper and nothing was in our budget or fit the vision. I started thinking about hand painted murals but had no idea how to find a muralist. I researched local artists but no one had the right style. So, one night during an instagram hashtag search to just to see what I could find and there it was: a mural painted in a bathroom in the exact style I knew could make what was in my head a reality and Dana was tagged. I reached out to her right away.

She drove out to meet me after we exchanged a few emails and we spent hours and hours just talking and laughing and cutting out color samples. She just got it right away. She knew the vibe I was looking for; how to bring to life the ethereal feeling trees, pastures with sheep in the distance, old fences, paths leading to ponds; she knew how to pull it together with the land that surrounds our house; and she emphatically said yes when I asked if she could include our two dogs in the mural!

When I say that the end result is beyond what I could have hoped for, I am not exaggerating. The mural is an absolute dream! It is absolutely stunning and every time I walk through the dining room, I am blown away by how beautiful it is. It is peaceful and jaw dropping and has truly set the entire tone for our home. I’ve joked that the rest of our home can’t live up to the dining room and it’s true! Dana outdid herself and I am beyond grateful that a random instagram post led me to her because she gave me a dream.