Photo by Erin Bloodgood
Val Lopez
Val Lopez
Val Lopez has always been one to take care of others and now as an occupational therapist at the Healing Intergenerational Roots (HIR) Wellness Institute, she truly puts her heart into her work. Lopez helps people who have mental health problems, disabilities, and other impairments participate in their communities by teaching them rehabilitation exercises, job readiness and other everyday life skills. Building a trusted connection with her patients and making them feel safe is her first step in finding a path for healing.
For many people, the story of how they found their way to their professional career starts with their schooling, but Lopez’s story starts with her mother. A strong loving woman who raised eight children on her own, her mother taught her children the importance of treating others with respect and dignity. Lopez took her mother’s lessons to heart and from a young age, she found a passion in caring for others.
The oldest of her eight siblings, Lopez chose to push back her college education and instead work full time to help her mother support the family. Later she got married and had two children and when her daughter was two years old, she started her part-time college career while continuing to work a full-time job.
Love and Pride
So much of Lopez’s devotion to bettering others’ health comes from the love and pride that her mother showed her. “I want to make [my mother] proud and my kids proud and I know that I am. I get my strength and my courage from her to be able to speak my truth and help others heal, the way I healed throughout the years,” she says.
Through much of her life, Lopez has struggled with depression and personally understands how mental health can impair people’s everyday lives. This experience led her to the field of occupational therapy and the unique approach HIR Wellness takes to healing mental health and intergenerational trauma.
At HIR Wellness Institute, Lopez works with Black, Indigenous and people of color who suffer from trauma that occurred through generations of oppression—a critical part of mental health that is often ignored in today’s mental health field. Lea S. Denny, the founder and CEO, developed a model for healing this intergenerational trauma called the Circle of Care. The patients at the wellness institute, or relatives as they are called, have the option of seeing multiple therapeutic specialists: an occupational therapist, a counselor (like Xavier Smart who we featured last month), and a trauma specialist.
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Because HIR Wellness offers care for free, they don’t have to adhere to the restrictions that insurance companies enforce, like making it too expensive to see multiple specialists. Instead, they can offer an integrated medicine approach that meets the needs of the people they are serving. Denny developed this model in response to how Indigenous communities heal—often in a communal way and with caregivers of different specialties.
Lopez is one part of that circle, bringing her compassion and dedication to the healing spaces. She describes her role in the Circle of Care: “a mender of hope, dignity and function who helps people reach their utmost potential through methods as dynamic as they are. Occupational therapists help the person be their best self so they can participate in activities that are important and meaningful to them.” It’s clear Lopez is making a significant impact on many people’s lives and helping them heal. “That’s what my purpose in life is.”
Learn more about HIR Wellness Institute at www.hirwellness.org.
