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Meet Jeanette Yoffe of Yoffe Therapy in Westwood

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeanette Yoffe.

Jeanette, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am originally from New York and always wanted to live in Los Angeles after performing with my high school band in the spectacular Disneyland’s parade in tenth grade. I remember sitting high up in the tour bus, looking down at the convertible cars thinking “that’s where I want to be when I grow up!”

I graduated high school and had two career choices: get a Bachelor’s degree in political science and work for the F.B.I .or get a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and become a theatre actress. I truly loved the theatre, I grew up around a lot of theatre on Long Island Westchester. It was mesmerizing to me. You could be anything you wanted to be, you didn’t have to decide! And choosing acting made it easier because I didn’t have to show up as me, I could fantasize about being somebody else with a “full script”. It was a relief… because my life script was missing so many early pages. I was raised in one foster family for six years and then adopted into another family at the age of 7 1/2. All I knew was my mother was Argentinian and my father was a telephone lineman and “something” happened and no one knew what! My early life has always felt like “walking into a mystery movie five minutes too late, leaving the theatre wondering who done it, and never getting the final answer.”

So I graduated from Pace University in Manhattan in 1993 and decided to drive cross country with a college friend in 1998 along Route 66. It took us fourteen days. We stopped in New Orleans, Nashville, Dallas, and the Grand Canyon. Eating beignets, meeting “gutter punks”, touring Elvis’ house, and basking in the painted desert at sunset. It was an amazing experience I will never forget!

In Los Angeles, I met a playwright, who was starting a theatre company in Venice, California called Oasis Theatre Ensemble, later named Venice Theatre Works. It was an exciting time. Not only did I join the company but I ended up writing a one-woman play about my experience growing up in foster care and adoption titled, “What’s Your Name, Who’s Your Daddy?” which I just recorded on Audible for National Adoption Month. I performed the play for our Grand opening Festival and it was entered into the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival. I then performed benefits for prominent foster care and adoption agencies in Los Angeles. I would do a Q&A after the show for social workers and therapists and was amazed by the response. I learned quickly that I knew more about the experience than the professionals did and I decided to go back to school and get a Master’s in Clinical Psychology. I became a licensed Psychotherapist in 2006 and now work with children in foster and adoptive families across Los Angeles and train therapists and social workers in Trauma-Informed Best Practice.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been a smooth road. I became obsessed with fixing the foster care system and quickly recognized how big the system was and how small a scratch I was making. I called the Department of Child and Family Services and said “who do I need to speak to train social workers because they are making promises to children that are not helpful and true!” Such as promising a return to their families, as well as sending them from home to home without considering the lifelong psychological and emotional impact! Children are not commodities, to be handed over from one home to another, they need permanency from one shoulder to another.

I recognized the lack of support services for foster families, as well as post-adoption support, and chose to blaze my own trail, which was not easy. I started a private psychotherapy practice in West LA named Yoffe Therapy Inc. and asked a local adoption agency, Vista Del Mar Family Services, to host a free monthly support group for first-birth parents, adoptees, foster youth alumni, and foster adoptive parents called Adopt Salon Constellation Support Group. I wanted us all to sit together in one room and figure out solutions to the problems in the foster care system “arm in arm”. Because of this group, I realized how important community is, and started a non-profit organization called Celia Center named after my first-birth mother Celia.

With Celia Center in place, we were able to fundraise and present two full-day mental health conferences, two ten-hour Arts Festivals, and a multitude of Wolfdog Healings over the past ten years. I am often surprised to say that I am the CEO of two businesses, both of which I formed in Los Angeles. I have devoted so many late nights and hours in the day whether it’s organizing events for our community, then processing a child’s grief and loss in my therapy office, and then advocating on behalf of children in foster care training Los Angeles County staff.

I have had triumphs, and I have made mistakes, And I have cried buckets. But I have never given up, and there have been many days where I question, “is the scratch I’m making even a scratch???” The difficulty I have found is you can’t always measure impact. It is often hard to know if what you are investing in is making a difference especially when it involves a city as large as Los Angeles. Because the reality is, there will always be a vulnerable child in need, and there will always be a family needed.

Yoffe Therapy Inc – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I am the director of a private group psychotherapy practice in Westwood named Yoffe Therapy. We specialize in working with children, teens, and families connected by foster care and adoption.

For Children/Teens. We provide attachment focused family therapy to facilitate secure attachments, help you understand your child’s history, build trust, attune to your child/teens’ underlying needs and teach you effective trauma-informed parenting tools that support you and your child.

For Parents: We provide answers to questions about considering adoption or fostering, how to be an effective parent, how to talk with your child/teen/adult about their adoption and/or foster care story.

For Adoptees/FosterAlum and Families of Origin: We provide psychotherapy to help process their history, manage trauma, relationships, grief, and loss.

What sets us apart is the work we do in family reunification and open adoption.

We provide family preservation and reunification therapy to help reintegrate children/teens with estranged family members, by creating a “step by step” reunification plan with all family members involved while following the child’s lead emotionally and psychologically.

We provide open-adoption facilitation with manageable steps to maintain connections with birth families and/or re-establish contact, how to create a child-focused open adoption plan with the goal of building healthy and stable relationships, as well as coaching and supporting all adults involved to focus on the best interest of the child. Children thrive knowing their birth family and when done well creates greater outcomes for children.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Helping children, teens, and adult adoptees reconnect with their families of origin. Whether it’s with their siblings or birth parents. It is so rewarding, so emotional, and most importantly healing for all. And when there is mindful preparation, psycho-education, and a support group to turn to, all things feel possible and manageable. I am so proud when all these pieces fall into place! And when someone feels held, seen, and received my heart melts and I know I have done my job and mission.

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Image Credit:
Ron Kopitowsky

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