About Me

My name is Shelita Ducré — author, advocate, and graduate student in Marriage and Family Therapy. But before any of those titles, I was someone who showed up. For more than thirty years, across leadership, administration, direct care, and dementia and hospice support, showing up was the work.

I learned what presence really means by sitting with people in some of the hardest rooms of their lives — a daughter watching her mother forget her name, a husband holding vigil in the final hours, a family trying to hold itself together through a diagnosis that changes everything. I learned that grief does not wait for the right words, and that sometimes the most healing thing you can offer a person is simply staying.

Those years shaped how I understand people long before they shaped my professional training. Before I sat in a graduate classroom studying family systems, I had spent years witnessing them — seeing how memory loss, caregiving, grief, and loss ripple through everyone a person loves, not only the person experiencing them.

I believe that work was never accidental. It was formation. A vocatio — a calling I did not choose so much as recognize, one room and one family at a time, until I could no longer ignore what I was being prepared for.

Where I'm Headed

I am currently pursuing a Master of Marriage and Family Therapy with a Treatment of Trauma concentration, preparing for future clinical work with individuals, couples, and families navigating trauma and intergenerational patterns. My developing professional interests include children and adolescents, culturally responsive practice, and community mental health.

My faith is part of how I understand this calling — it is the ground I stand on, not something separate from the work. As I move toward clinical practice, I intend to meet each future client where they are and allow faith to enter the room only if and how it is meaningful to them. For me personally, though, this path has always been as spiritual as it is professional.

Alongside my graduate training, I have stayed rooted in community as a certified NAMI Family Support Group Facilitator, Sharing Hope Facilitator & Ambassador, and QPR-trained suicide prevention advocate. This work continues to teach me that healing does not happen only in a therapy room. Sometimes it happens in a library hosting a book drive. Sometimes it happens in a circle of strangers realizing they are not as alone as they thought.

Looking Ahead

My long-term goal is to become a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in trauma and intergenerational healing. I am working toward creating a healing center where youth and families can access compassionate, culturally responsive, trauma-informed care alongside education, connection, and community support.

I also plan to establish a foundation honoring my parents and the legacy they left behind — because for me, this work became personal long before it became professional.

Beyond the Clinical Room

I am also an author and spoken word artist. Writing has been how I process, witness, and heal long before I had letters after my name, and it remains one of the truest parts of who I am.

My work is guided by one belief: people deserve to be seen fully.

Whether that happens through a poem, a future therapy session, or a conversation in a community room, that is the work I am here to do.