About Jenny
Jenny Epstein Kessem, MA, LPC, BC-DMT, ACS (she/her/hers) photo by Barb Colombo
Hello. I'm Jenny.
One of my great passions is to embrace the paradox of accepting ourselves as we are right now, while also committing to change. So while you may be seeking therapy to get rid of some problem, I may encourage you to accept that problem, listen to it, and even to notice how it is taking care of you. Ironically, this is how problems seem to eventually go.
When I sit with you, I offer my wild and wide acceptance, my calm presence, my sense of humor, and what I have gathered from two and half decades of clinical experience. Clients have said I am a therapist "who really gets it."
I love helping people inhabit their bodies. An embodied person is a person able to find what she wants, able to regulate himself, and able to experience deep pleasure.
We suffer when we experience an extreme state and hunker down there. Instead, that extreme experience can be an opportunity to widen perspective and increase tolerance for a range of experiences. I love highlighting these opportunities and supporting clients with specific skills to work with stuckness.
In my own life, I have found myself in a myriad of extremes. I wanted to change the world but was unable to look at myself. My lifestyle was not accepted in the mainstream but I still wanted to fit in. I worked diligently to identify neurodivergence in many family members, and in the process realized I am neurodivergent myself. That process has been a source of freedom and relief! As I have learned to accept and love the unwanted parts of myself, I have found more and more peace. There's nothing I love more than sharing with others the fruits of this life experience.
Training and Experience
Jenny Epstein Kessem, MA, LPC, BC-DMT, ACS is a licensed psychotherapist with two decades of clinical experience in mindfulness and body-centered therapy. She is a Board Certified Dance Movement Therapist and an Approved Clinical Supervisor. She has worked with diverse people from many walks of life, and includes in her work a perspective that comes from working intimately with people from many different worlds. She works with people who are seeking personal growth and going through life changes. She works with neurodivergent people. She has worked with torture survivors who are seeking asylum, people with addictions and eating issues of all kinds, adolescents court-ordered for treatment, survivors of sexual abuse, and people with severe mental illnesses. Jenny trained as a peer counselor before getting a Masters in Somatic Psychology at Naropa University. She has studied Trauma Resolution with the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, Working with Groups as Living Systems with Mukara Meredith and Matrixworks, the Hakomi Method of Psychotherapy with Phil DelPrince and Melissa Grace, the Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy with Stan Tatkin, neuropsychology with Allan Schore and neurodiversity affirming care with Nyck Walsh. She is former adjunct faculty at Naropa's Graduate School of Psychology. She has special training and is credentialed (ACS) in the skill of supervision of psychotherapists.
Personal Interests
Jenny lives with her husband, two spunky children, and her cat in Lafayette, Colorado, USA. She loves getting quiet in nature and focusing on one thing at a time. She is an avid forager of culinary mushrooms, and is an amateur mycologist. Her favorite form of dance, Contact Improvisation, is a practice that hones presence and spontaneity. Jenny also regularly practices Authentic Movement with a group of women that has been practicing together for fifteen years. She has studied and taught yoga and aerial dance. She also loves fluid movement forms such as swimming, cross country skiing and biking. Jenny collects found objects like bones and nests, and loves to create sculpture, poetry and photography. Many of the photos on this website are Jenny's photos, unless otherwise credited.
Jenny is a survivor of cancer and is forever transformed by the experience. Her dance with death has deepened her relationship to life. She continues to dance, and finds from this movement experience that “pleasure is the way out of hell.” Jenny draws on her inner knowing of health crisis to support others in navigating their own body journeys with humor, perspective, tenacity and compassion.
