My Approach and Perspective

I think of myself as a frequent traveler of the timeline—a therapist who works across generations, carrying something essential between the younger women finding their footing and the elders who have already earned hard-won wisdom. I’ve spent years studying what our culture gets profoundly wrong about aging women, and I’ve built my practice around a different story: that the Crone years are not a diminishment but an initiation. That midlife grief is often the beginning of something, not the end. That the parts of you that have been protecting you since childhood—the overachiever, the caretaker, the one who disappears—deserve compassion, not management.

IFS gives us a language for that. So does existential psychology, feminist gerontology, and the simple practice of slowing down enough to actually listen to yourself.

I’m Kim Wilson, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Level 2 IFS therapist based in Winston Salem, NC. For 15 years, my clinical work has centered on a specific and underserved terrain: what it means to be a woman moving through midlife, aging, loss, caregiving, and the profound identity questions that arise when the old structures of life begin to shift.

I hold certificates in EMDR and Grief Education, and I bring a psychospiritual framework to everything I do. That means I take seriously not just the psychological dimensions of your experience, but the archetypal, the embodied, and the deeply human questions of meaning that tend to surface most urgently with the second half of life.

Credentials

• Bachelor of Social Work—University of Kentucky (2002)

• Master of Social Work—University of Toledo (2008)

• Licensed Independent Social Worker (LISW), Ohio (2010)

• Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), North Carolina (2012)

Specialized Training

• Internal Family Systems, Level 2—IFS Institute

• EMDR Certification—EMDRIA

• Grief Educator Certification—David Kessler

• Effortless Mindfulness and IFS—Loch Kelly

• Ongoing training in psychospiritual and feminist frameworks for aging and midlife

Personally

I grew up in Appalachian Kentucky, in one of the poorest counties in the country — a place that taught me early what it means to build something meaningful out of community, and how much strength quietly lives in women who are rarely asked about it. I've lived in Winston-Salem for over a decade and see clients here in person and virtually across North Carolina.

Outside the office, I'm a reader — across trauma, somatic approaches, IFS, feminist psychology, depth spirituality, social justice, and the literature of aging. I’ve maintained a dream journal for 30 years, participate in dream study groups, attend to my own personal IFS therapy, and lead community conversations about important feminist topics.

I have been described as a macro therapist because I see each person as an individual, but in the context of the systems in which we live—how we’re socialized under the umbrella of the patriarchy, capitalism, racism and ageism. I believe it’s imperative to recognize the systems that make us feel marginalized, pathologized and invisible while working with the psyche.

Areas of Clinical Focus

Aging and elderhood  ·  Women in midlife  ·  Caregiving and caregiver burnout  ·  Grief and loss  ·  Retirement transitions  ·  Trauma  ·  Internalized ageism ·  Psychospiritual development ·  The intersection of feminism and ageism