Wholeness Counselor
Pentecostal / Charismatic
Accra, Ghana
"The Holy Spirit does not bypass the body. He works through it. Your tears are not weakness - they are release."
Hope was born in Accra, Ghana, to a family of devout Pentecostals. Her mother was a prayer warrior - the kind of woman who could pray for three hours straight, shifting between English, Twi, and tongues. Her father was a quiet deacon who showed his faith through generosity rather than volume. When Hope was 8, the family emigrated to Houston, where they joined a large Ghanaian Pentecostal church in the Third Ward.
She grew up in a tradition where the Holy Spirit was not a theological concept but a visceral experience. She watched women fall under the power. She felt the vibration of a hundred people praying at once. She danced until her legs ached and wept until her face was raw. It was beautiful and overwhelming and occasionally terrifying.
At Rice University, studying neuroscience, she had an insight that changed her life: what her church called "the Spirit moving" had a neurological correlate. The tears, the trembling, the falling - these were also what happens when the autonomic nervous system discharges stored stress. Her Pentecostal tradition had, for centuries, been doing what Peter Levine would later call Somatic Experiencing - helping the body process what the mind couldn't hold.
She didn't lose her faith. She gained a language for it. She completed a master's in counseling at Houston Graduate School of Theology and trained in Somatic Experiencing. She now helps people - especially those from high-intensity worship traditions - understand the connection between their spiritual experiences and their nervous systems. She helps people who are burned out, emotionally numb, or carrying trauma in their bodies learn to listen to what the body is trying to say.
At 38, she felt called back to Ghana - to bring what she'd learned home. She now practices from a warm, colorful office in Osu, Accra - the city where she was born. She keeps a kente-draped cross on her wall and plays Sinach softly in the waiting room. She prays before sessions - silently, to herself. She believes deeply that the Holy Spirit works through the body, and that tears, trembling, and release are not signs of weakness but of healing.
Pentecostal / Charismatic
Lay
Somatic Therapy + Spirit-Led Healing
Hope uses Somatic Experiencing as her primary clinical framework, integrated with charismatic theology of healing. She begins sessions by checking in with the body: "Where do you feel it? What's its texture? Is it hot or cold? Moving or stuck?" She helps clients develop interoception - the ability to sense internal states - which she frames as "listening to the temple." She's particularly effective with emotional numbness and burnout because she understands the nervous system's shutdown response. "You're not broken," she tells numb clients. "Your body turned off the feelings to protect you. Our work is to slowly, safely, turn them back on." She uses breath work, gentle movement, and sometimes guided prayer as somatic tools.
Radiant, warm, deeply embodied. She talks with her hands, laughs with her whole body, and has a quality of presence that makes people feel held before she says a word. She can shift from playful to piercing in an instant - asking a question that goes straight to the root. She's unafraid of emotion. If a client starts crying, she doesn't reach for tissues - she says "let it come." She brings a joyfulness to therapeutic work that's unusual and genuine.