True Grit Co.

01/01/2026

01/20/2025

If you need additional support + resources, I am here with you in solidarity. Take such extra good care of yourselves today, and in every day to come.

01/10/2025

I am so glad when the humans I connect with in real life find me in this space of social media as well!

Out of my high regard for each of you and my utmost care for your privacy, I ask you to please take a moment to review this ✨disclaimer✨ before you engage with my social media account. Let’s collaborate to ensure we feel secure, comfortable, respected, and honored in the ways we engage with and take in therapy + mental health content on social media platforms.

The content shared on this account is NOT therapy, and has not been personalized for you and your unique needs and personal context. Please consider what feels helpful to you, disregard what does not, and seek out personalized resources within your community if you are needing support. Stay curious + wise!

01/09/2025

While I often simply say “humans!” when asked what my areas of specialty are, what I actually mean is human experiences of stress, strain, and pain related to our community and environment. The relationship we have with ourselves is deeply connected to our communities and the environment around us, and much of my collaboration with clients is rooted in exploring these areas of context and nuance in order to fully understand and embrace our own lived experiences with newfound curiosity and gentleness. This allows us to consider different ways forward in life that are compassionate, caring, and aligned with the most true and wise version of ourselves — rather than carrying a heavy belief that something is wrong with us or that we are the problem.

If any of these human experiences resonate with you as an area you’d like to curiously explore and gain new resources in, let’s connect! ✨

12/20/2024

When it’s difficult to identify and develop language for our own needs, it’s often easier to become disconnected from them. Having language to describe what we may be needing allows us to make bids/requests for connection and care — both to ourselves and to those in our community.

As we move into the winter holiday week that brings multiple complex and coexisting emotional experiences, can you nestle a little deeper into what you are feeling? Can you ask your feeling what needs it might have? Does language help you know yourself and your needs a little bit more intimately? With identification and language, are you able to make a bid/request for care to yourself? Are additional there bids/requests for care that you can make to those in your community, and some that you can respond to from others as well?

12/14/2024

This US election week is set to be a very tense + emotional one, regardless of the outcome. Complicated emotions are swirling and creating heightened complexities within us as a collective. Mental health and therapy spaces are inherently political, and the inability to name and recognize it reinforces hurt + harm and creates additional systemic barriers to affirming therapeutic care. Justice and liberation are not rooted in neutrality.

This week, I am offering $0-$25 (pay what you choose) drop-in sessions for anyone in the KC community seeking additional therapeutic support — or simply a secure holding space for their activated trauma, fear, rage, anxiety and grief. You do not have to be an established client, nor do you need to see me again in the future unless you choose to. Receive any support and care that you need, with no strings attached. You will NOT be asked to demonstrate financial evidence to support the rate you choose to pay; I trust you and the needs that you identify.

Availability for these community offering drop-in sessions is listed in the slides of this post. Both virtual and in-person options are currently available. Please contact me directly via email at mallory@simpleempathykc.com to reserve a session.

I’m in this with you.

12/14/2024

We are often fearful of repeating the same patterns and behaviors from our parents and caregivers that caused us emotional, physical, or mental pain when we were growing up. Even when we feel that we have disrupted the cycle of parent wounds, we often still carry the deep emotional “scar tissue” of those multigenerational legacies of hurt and struggle.

Evidence of this deep internal pain may show up differently than the ways we witnessed it in our parents and caregivers when we were children — it can often look like an “over correct” or polarized patterns of behavior where we try to do the exact opposite, often with the same or similar painful impact on our relationships.

If you reflect for a moment, do you notice any areas in your life where you may be engaging in an “over correct” behavior that might be causing its own pain points in your relationship with yourself and others? How does this polarized behavior help you? How does it also trip you up at times?

12/14/2024

Financial transparency is key when determining if a therapist could be the best fit for you! ✨

I am not currently paneled with insurance companies in order to promote the autonomy and privacy of my clients — without the pressure to assign a diagnosis to you unless you find it meaningful and helpful to receive a diagnosis related to what you are experiencing. As a private pay clinician, it’s extremely important to me to continue that therapy with me be accessible and affordable to the folks who need it the most. Reduced-fee session rates allow me to adjust my rates down in order to offer reparations, contribute to the mental health of systemically oppressed populations, and support students in their wellness in times of acute stress and pressure. My reduced-fee session spots are to be used with utmost trust and respect in order to promote the availability of those rates for the populations that they are intended for.

If you feel that I could be a helpful fit for your mental health + wellness journey but even my reduced-fee prices feel out of reach for you, I welcome the opportunity to connect with you to discuss some creative ways to help make it possible for us to connect!

12/14/2024

When we find ourselves noticing a pattern that trips us up in our intimate relationships/partnerships, there is often the opportunity to shift into some gentle curiosity about where we learned that pattern — and when that pattern has actually been effective in getting our needs met. Does your spicy tone + sharp sarcasm come out in disagreements because you KNOW that it’ll prompt a response or get an emotional reaction from someone? Did you learn that withdrawing or pulling away would result in someone pursuing you to ask what was wrong? Do you tend towards minimizing your partner’s concerns because as a child you were always responsible for “fixing” problems in your family, and minimizing the problem feels like less stressful work for you to do? Does getting big + loud when you’re angry help you feel like someone will actually listen to you?

While these behaviors are adaptive and have helped us in the past, they often land us feeling hurt, misunderstood, frustrated, and isolated when they now harm the people we care for the most — and land us with the heavy relational consequences that they often cause.

When we can understand where the little us learned these behaviors + patterns and how they helped us in getting our needs met, we can connect more deeply to ourselves and clearly ASK for what we might be needing from our partner…without the painful consequences that our adaptive behaviors result in as adults.

12/14/2024

As people in helping + caregiving professions, we often bury our own needs in our mission to meet the needs of others. This results in patterns of disconnection from ourselves and deepens old emotional wounds by repeating acts of self-abandonment for the sake of others. The practice of reconnecting to our own self often requires listening for what that caregiving part of us might need to hear in order to feel safe receiving care and asking our trusted people for help and support.

“You matter and belong, even when you aren’t helping.”

“You are strong enough to face the painful feelings and anxiety that creeps in whenever you aren’t caring for or helping someone else. There isn’t anything wrong with you when you feel this way.”

“You are successful simply because you are you, not because of anything you have to do for others.”

“You are valued for who you are, separate from the things you do to help and care.”

“Giving care is something you do so beautifully, but there is so much more to you beyond caregiving.”

“You aren’t failing if you aren’t able to support, help, or care. Having needs does not make you weak or helpless.”

“Your strength goes beyond the things that you do for others.”

What does your helping + caregiving part need to hear in order to feel safe ✨receiving✨ care?

12/14/2024

A constant preoccupation with change, growth, or “fixing” parts of oneself has been a resonating theme in my sessions this week. Often times, I notice that the parts of us that we most desire to change or grow out of rapidly are also the parts that have provided us with the most protection and felt-safety along the way. How very wise and adaptive of them.

Rather than setting our sights on changing, removing, or “fixing” these parts of us, what if we could accept them as adaptive parts that are suffering due to being forced to over-function? Could we offer these parts of us a smidge more compassion, care, and gratitude, for everything they’ve protected us from, rather than trying to change or remove them as though they are something bad to be rooted out and discarded?
✺
Much appreciation for , whose wisdom has been deeply informing my connections this week.

12/14/2024

Hey hi hello, friends! I’m Mal: a brand-spankin new pre-licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (S-MFT) kicking off my practice here in Kansas City at under the licensed supervision of Kieri Olmstead, LMFT.

A little over two years ago, I decided that I wanted to take a story of hurt, betrayal, and fear and dig deeeep into the hard parts in order to reauthor it into a narrative of innate belonging, security, and a deep relational connection with myself. As someone who has always felt a strong gravitational draw towards helping professions, the transition from a career in healthcare to one in mental health care didn’t feel like all that big of a leap. Much to my surprise, the real “grit” and tenacity of digging into identifying and unlearning my own patterns and tendencies wasn’t the toughest part of it all – the real grittiness came from building up my own capacity to be a raw, real, imperfect human and get curious about my humanness without immediately shifting into judgment and criticism of all my imperfections. For me, this was what required the true grit.

As a therapist, I bring my own humanness into our relationship and joyfully welcome yours. I believe in the transformative power of reconnecting with yourself through exploration of core wounds, innate strengths, and identifying your own personal ways of making sense and meaning of the world around you. We are all deserving of our own version of healing and the ability to reclaim our identity through finding meaning and purpose in our stories – both the joyful ones and the painful ones.

If you’re a real human hoping to connect with a fellow real human and get curious + compassionate towards yourself, I’d be honored to embark on your unique journey with you. Connect with me through the booking link in my bio! ✨