Monica Gorski, MSN, APNP, ARNP, APRN, PMHNP-BC

Hello! I’m Monica. And I’m really glad you’re here.

I am a holistic nurse practitioner with a decade of experience helping adults tend to the broad spectrum of mental health concerns we can face in the human experience. I began practicing as a PMHNP in outpatient community mental health clinics in the Driftless region in 2014. In this role, I supported hundreds of patients, all of whom were affected by stress and trauma, whether at an interpersonal, institutional, or intergenerational level, and reported experiences with various manifestations of anxiety, depression, bipolar mood cycling, and altered states.

I am grateful to every person I worked with in this role, though I found myself perpetually limited in the quality and depth of care the mainstream system allowed. Treatment was expected to be algorithmic and efficient. Solutions were superficial. It was dehumanizing to both the patients and the workers. Somewhere along the way, “psych” became synonymous with “meds.” While medication can be a crucial part of mental health for many people and I am grateful to have it as a tool, oversimplifying the role of psychiatric clinician as a diagnostic pharmacist completely misses the point in what deeply therapeutic care can be. I knew people deserved a better, more personalized and nuanced approach to their suffering. A conscious practice, if you will.

Empowered by the homebirth of my first child, I felt called to fulfill my life’s purpose to offer a deliberate, small-scale alternative path to help people tend to their mental health needs. I left my job and created Conscious Practice in that pursuit. I have since been like a pioneer traversing a whole new world. The first midwestern mental health nurse practitioner to leave the mainstream in 2018; the first local psychiatric practitioner to start a personalized, independent, doing-things-different integrative practice in 2019; the first local practitioner trained in somatic trauma processing using Accelerated Resolution Therapy in 2019; the first local practitioner engaging in cultural somatics in 2021; the first local practitioner certified in perinatal mental health who can do integrated therapy and medication counseling for those in need of both; the first local practitioner offering psychedelic integration and ketamine assisted therapy in 2022. I have learned so much and continue to be humbled by the complexity of humans and our many layers. Now 5 years later, through all the healing, growth, and lessons learned, I feel even clearer that this practice is a needed sanctuary for people tired of the status quo.

More important than my external qualifications lies my inner work which supports and nourishes the therapeutic space of Conscious Practice. My own labyrinthine path of healing and ever-unfolding growth, shedding, deepening, and awakening lays the foundation for all the work I do. I am grateful to my ancestors, descendants, inner parts, teachers, and communities (both human and ecological) who support me.

In past lives (i.e. prior to grad school), I served as a rape prevention peer educator, domestic violence advocate, and a rape crisis volunteer. My background also includes writing consultancy, sociocultural and linguistic anthropology, natural food service, birth work, racial justice advocacy, and diverse spiritual exploration. All of these realms have humbled me and led me deep in the mud.

Most humbling of all, I am a mother. Both my children were born undisturbed at home, and I am guided by these instincts and paradoxical gifts of power and surrender in all that I do. I am a huge advocate of fully informed birth choices, respecting the diverse paths babies take to arrive in our arms, honoring the profundity of reproductive power, and making space for the tremendous rites of passage and portals to healing that can be discovered in birth and parenthood. I welcome people from all walks of life but am especially passionate about supporting mamas, papas, and gender nonconforming parents working on their mental health during these tender early years.

I practice from a relational, IFS-informed, culturally appreciative lens with practical somatic, herbal, and psychopharmacological tools. I welcome clients exactly as they are and make it a habit to bring my whole self to the present moment to witness, guide, challenge, and celebrate you.

By freeing ourselves from limiting internalized narratives, we free ourselves up to do the external work our families and our world desperately needs—that is, the more we heal and reclaim our power, the more we are able to embody our power and create more possibilities out in the world. This radical hope grounds my work.