Who we are
Rooted in Practice. Grounded in Community.
Journey Together was founded on a simple belief: that creative expression is a fundamental human right, and that art can reach where words cannot.
Our Mission
Journey Together exists to bring expressive arts therapy and community-based mental health support to marginalized groups who have been underserved by conventional mental health systems.
We work alongside communities — not above them. Our programs are shaped by local knowledge, cultural tradition, and the lived experience of the people we serve. We believe healing is not something done to a community, but something that emerges from within it.
Through visual art, movement, music, storytelling, drama, and land-based practice, we create conditions for people to process grief, reclaim identity, build resilience, and find voice.
What Guides Us
Community-Led
Every program is shaped by the community it serves. We listen first, and we follow the lead of local knowledge and lived experience.
Culturally Grounded
We honor Indigenous and local art traditions as valid and powerful therapeutic modalities — not as supplements to Western practice, but as medicine in their own right.
Trauma-Informed
All of our work is grounded in trauma-informed principles. Safety, choice, collaboration, and empowerment guide every session and every relationship.
Relational
Healing happens in relationship. We prioritize long-term presence over short-term visits, and deep partnership over transactional engagement.
Our Leadership
Journey Together is led by three clinicians whose combined expertise spans expressive arts therapy, counseling, and art therapy — with deep roots in community practice.
Dr. Katherine Jackson
Expressive Arts Therapist
Dr. Jackson is a registered expressive arts therapist with over two decades of experience facilitating healing through the arts in community and clinical settings. Her work spans four continents and is rooted in the belief that every person carries an innate creative capacity for healing. She leads Journey Together's program design and facilitator training.
Dr. Megan Seaman
Licensed Professional Counselor
Dr. Seaman is a licensed professional counselor specializing in trauma, grief, and community mental health. She brings a relational, culturally responsive approach to her work and has been instrumental in developing Journey Together's partnerships with communities in Nepal and South Africa. She oversees clinical supervision and program evaluation.
Melissa Hladek
Licensed Professional Counselor & Art Therapist
Melissa is a licensed professional counselor and board-certified art therapist whose practice centers on the intersection of visual art and emotional healing. She has worked extensively with Indigenous communities and youth in crisis, and leads Journey Together's work on the Cheyenne River Lakota Reservation and in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Our Approach
We use the full spectrum of expressive arts — visual art, music, movement, drama, poetry, and storytelling — as therapeutic modalities. We do not require artistic skill or prior experience. The process is the medicine, not the product. Our facilitators are trained to hold space with cultural humility, trauma awareness, and deep respect for each community's own healing traditions.