Today we’d like to introduce you to Shawnee Palmer.
Hi Shawnee, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
At the age of 5, I was introduced to a whirlwind of trauma, anything that you can think of, I saw it. As I grew older, I became more aware of what was right and what was wrong. In middle school, I decided to cleave to love and become someone I had never seen before. A person that I could only dream of becoming and an unknown plan of how to become her. I decided I would be an entrepreneur in the 7th grade. I have always enjoyed helping people, so after high school, I decided to take business classes and then went to work on a nursing degree. After two years of college, I lost my passion for both and shifted to working on my undergraduate degree in social work. This is the defining moment in my life when everything in class made sense. It aligned with the pain I had endured during my childhood, and it gave me hope to start my healing journey. I then made a commitment to healing so that I could be the best role model for my son and all youth and as a health professional for anyone I worked with. I studied relentlessly the understanding of family dynamics and what would’ve been beneficial for someone like me growing up. I took that information into consideration when I started my mental health private practice in 2016, and I’ve been working in it full-time since 2018. After working with over 350 clients, from ages 7-80, in Colorado, Missouri, and Illinois, offering therapy and seeing many lives change for the better, I decided that there was more that I could offer to the world, so I wrote a book. My book is Shifting Your Mindset: A Guide to Overcome Depression, Anxiety, and Trauma, which gives details about my life experiences and healthy ways to address and cope with life stressors. I also started a non-profit, Kindred Youth Foundation, which I self-funded for the first two years. The nonprofit focuses on offering support groups for youth who have experienced generational issues with substance use. My future goals after that are to build wellness centers and residential treatment facilities that offer a combination of the things I’ve started so far. I’m motivated every day to keep doing the work because the little 5-year-old me is looking up to me to see if I fulfilled the goal of becoming the person we had never seen before. My business is unique because I was able to utilize treatment modalities to cater to others who experienced similar life traumas and be a representation of the endless possibilities of life after healing.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has been far from easy. I didn’t grow up around entrepreneurial like-minded individuals, so starting from scratch was a challenge. It takes a lot of courage and strength to become an entrepreneur. It can be mentally and emotionally exhausting due to the big vision and dreams that I have that are out of alignment with my upbringing and family culture. Along the way, I’ve encountered rejection from family and friends. A lack of understanding and support from loved ones can cause self-isolation. It’s also taken a toll on my finances as everything starting off, in the beginning, is self-funded. It’s also impacted my ability to have a social life because there have been many periods that I have eaten, slept, and breathed my business. But I’ve learned the value of self-care during challenging times.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next, you can tell us a bit more about your business.
At Alpine’s Empowerment Agency, we offer individual and group counseling services for adolescents and adults. We also offer mental health workshops/webinars for non-profit and for-profit organizations, clinical supervision, field site for graduate and undergraduate students, and self-help books/courses. The issues that we address in our services and products are Substance Abuse, Depression, Anxiety, Acute Stress Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Trauma, Grief & Loss, and Workplace and relationship stressors.
Alpine’s is focused on providing services and products of integrity to build healthy and effective relationships with clients and community partners. While we are small, we see a need for additional mental health services to be offered in our community that larger organizations are lacking. This will allow us to expand in a short period of time.
I am excited that I have been able to operate the business full-time since 2018 and offer continuous services to everyone who was impacted by the COVID pandemic. To date, I have worked with over 350 clients, and many of the clients were able to have life-changing experiences that they wouldn’t have had if the business wasn’t an option for them. The biggest accomplishment was launching a mental health self-help book that has been an extension to the therapy services offered at AEA. We have been recognized on the news and the newspaper in St. Louis, MO for the support that we offered during the pandemic.
With compassion and a unique understanding of culture, our services and products assist many people with overcoming generational traumas. By overcoming traumas, it allows a person to operate and thrive in their life purpose.
What do you think about luck?
Luck isn’t a thing in my life or business. It is all God! Without him, business would be nothing. The faith that we have in God has helped with overcoming all obstacles in life. We are believers in Jesus Christ, and because of his ultimate sacrifice, we have thrived and will continue doing so for generations and generations to come. All glory be to God!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alpinesempowermentagency.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/alpines_ea
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/alpinesea
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawneepalmer
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ShawneeP
