Today we’d like to introduce you to Tichina Burnett Caelum.
Hi Tichina, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve been working in psychology in some capacity for 20 years and in the mental health field, specifically therapy, for 12 years. Both the maternal and paternal sides of my family have mental health difficulties ranging from addiction and abuse to abandonment and co-occurring disorders—all of which show up in either relational dynamics between parents and children or hierarchies between elders and younger family members.
After witnessing the residual and life-altering impacts of a family member’s mental health difficulty when I was 14, I desperately needed to understand why and how people’s lived experiences contributed to the manifestations of their lives being deeply constricted, without boundaries, or altogether in disarray and distressed. Often it initially appeared that this outcome was reflective of nothing from their previous experiences.
After completing undergrad in 2010 and working for a major publishing house, I started graduate school in 2013. I graduated in 2015 with my masters in counseling psychology and started working in government.
I transitioned fully back into the therapy space and became a clinician at a private practice in 2019 a few months after giving birth to my son. I passed my final set of licensing exams in 2021 and was let go a few weeks later. I decided to dive head first into starting my own practice in the winter of 2022 with a very heavy leading of the Holy Spirit. I needed to prove that with God’s undergirding I could absolutely do anything.
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 absolutely not been a smooth road. I have a strict, yet compassionate and dogged work ethic, and every person that I’ve hired and worked with doesn’t always share that drive on an ongoing basis. I haven’t always accepted insurance as my primary form of payment in the practice and in the beginning, saw clients for just their copayment until I could become credentialed with insurance companies.
Another hurdle was my personal life, the difficulties in my marriage, and raising children while running a private practice, managing staff, and continuing to see clients. That was rough and it often felt like there weren’t enough hands to manage the multiple fires arising when one would go out while another was searching for its kindling.
Some of the more difficult spaces that arose while running a practice include finding funding for ensuring my clients who can’t afford therapy have means to see clinicians and access the care they need; finding the funding for grants to purchase the equipment we need for new clinicians, sometimes ensuring we’re going to make payroll; and having enough capital to pay for health benefits, while maintaining referral streams for clients so that my clinicians can continue to work. I will note that God is and has always been extremely faithful, though.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a clinical therapist who specializes in working with millennial adult clients who are navigating difficulties with multi-contextual grief, suicidality, depression, and relational issues. Transparently, I’m most honored that I get the privilege of being present with people in their deeply vulnerable emotion-based moments when they’re on the brink of believing their lives aren’t valuable, they’re lacking support, choose to try one last time, and find themselves worth living and breathing for. It’s in these moments that I’m more than willing to continue doing this work despite the depth of fatigue both mentally and physically that feel inherent to it.
I believe that what sets me apart from other practitioners in the clinical therapy field is that I don’t believe I’m any different or more evolved emotionally than the clients I’m serving. There’s a hierarchical differentiation between the individual seeking help from a clinician and the clinician providing it, but authentically, we’re both human beings confronting the complexities of our lived experiences while trying to live well and fully. I work to equip my clients with the tools to care for themselves in proficient ways to ensure they don’t develop dependence on therapists. My desire is for people to be present while effectively engaging problem resolution while both feeling and not solely being subjected to what’s happening in their lives and how those happenings may be seen by others. Therapy curates context for these constructs to land providing lasting results and yielding long-term resonance.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
Most people don’t know that I’m just recently (this year in 2026) accessing and deeply experiencing the bi-directional, grace yielding, and liberating nature of the therapy space for myself as a recently divorced woman. I’ve been personally attending therapy intermittently for 11 years now in varying capacities. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered that I believe more in community, unmitigated love, and the depth of possibility for myself where I was previously unsure about my desire to continue living. I stand very firm in the belief that yes, even the carers need care, but also, that we must always be mindful to honor the beautiful and intangible fragility inherent to the human mind.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://themendingcorner.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themendingcorner/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMendingCorner/
