joy Melodee “Mel” gentry bosna, msw, lcsw, she/her

A core tenant of Mel’s treatment philosophy is the emphasis of your humanity—and, it’s hard to be human within the systems we’re living in! It’s from a place of shared humanity that she offers support and a witness to healing. There is very little she’ll ask you to do that she hasn’t had to do, isn’t still doing or willing to try—which is precisely why she’s confident your life can AND will change if you embrace your own humanity and work on rebuilding your relationship with yourself. This of course isn’t about her story, it’s about yours. Change is inevitable when we risk for it.

Mel’s passionate about embodied consent and boundaries practices, and sees individual pain within systemic context. Therefore she’s committed to working on the structural pieces that are the foundation for the reasons we’re suffering (looking at you racism, misogyny, homophobia and poverty). She’s interested in caring for the underlying reasons we have difficulty trusting ourselves and that make practicing consent, repair and boundaries hard to access.

Specialties:

• Complex Trauma: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

• Shame work

• Abuse: sexual assault, infidelity/betrayal trauma, gas lighting/emotional manipulation, religious abuse, childhood sexual abuse/incest (CSA), human trafficking

• Self-Abandonment and attachment disruption from family of origin (co-dependency, intimacy-avoidance and developmental immaturity)

• Eating disorders: orthorexia, anorexia, bulimia, binging, body image distress

• Relationships & Sexuality: dating, divorce, non-traditional structures, FTSW

• Boundaries & consent: internal and relational

• Brain-Spotting, IFS, EMDR & FLASH trained

• Anti-racisist, Neurodivergent & Queer affirming

Mel received a BS in Sociology and a Master in Social Work and is licensed as an independent clinical social worker (LCSW) in the state of AZ. She’s worked at an inpatient eating disorder facility, acted as the Residential Director of an adolescent group home for survivors of sex trafficking and taught in a graduate counseling program. In 2010 she founded My Story Redeemed, PPLC and remains in private practice. Mel intentionally takes on a limited number of clients whose areas of vulnerability align with her specialties and scope of practice.

In addition to therapy, Mel conducted a qualitative national research project on embodied consent and wrote her first book in 2023, In The House of Me.