Today we’d like to introduce you to Leslie Pertz, LMSW, PMH-C.
Hi Leslie, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Like the classic hero’s journey (not that I think I am a hero, just the name of the construct), I left home from the corner of southwest Michigan, my life took many twists and turns along the way, and I return home to Lake Michigan when I can, the same, but a different person. Although never anything I planned or expected, I now live and work in Ann Arbor, providing reproductive trauma psychotherapy to women and birth-givers all across the state, in-person and via Telehealth, and I teach others across the globe to use eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR). I also practice & teach yoga as a way to help people journey back to their body, and I support body and spirit as a master practitioner of reiki. As if that wasn’t journey enough, I am also fluent in American Sign Language (ASL), having worked for many years as an ASL/English interpreter in medical, post-secondary, and community settings. What a wild journey my life has been. I think this path is a result of my natural tendency to be a life-long learner, and my willingness to be curious to follow a detour that I didn’t know was possible. While not all sections along my professional path have developed this way, especially my current role as a reproductive trauma therapist, came in part of my own lived experience with infertility and pregnancy loss, including a termination for medical reasons, that found me learning there were not enough good options for mental healthcare with someone who had sufficient clinical knowledge. I kept expanding my clinical knowledge to become the change I wished to see in the world.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
A smooth road does not share an address with infertility and pregnancy loss. This was an approximate 15 year journey and many thousands of dollars (infertility treatment is often little covered by insurance if not none at all) until the pandemic hit and infertility care was deemed “non-essential” thus was not available for many months during the height of covid healthcare clinic closures. This unexpected detour allowed me to begin to grapple with the idea of settling to a now very happy child-free life. While I am never the kind of therapist who says “look for the silver lining,” I made many friends along this path, and I count my own EMDR treatment, and my 35+ year yoga practice as core elements of support. These somatic and spiritual practices I know make me a better and more attuned therapist than I was before. A therapist I had a long time ago as I was just about to start graduate school said to me, “you have made it through, now you can walk others along their paths, confident you won’t get lost because you will always be connected to yourself. He was so right indeed.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
The name of my business comes from the reason my great-grandparents came to Michigan, to work a peach farm. Peachtree is the name of the road where my family has lived for over 90 years. While the peach trees are no longer there, the roots of my family run strong to that land- and I know the land belongs to the ancestors of the people from the Neshnabek (the People of the Three Fires Confederacy), which includes the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa nations- and I think the land and honoring the land can teach us all a lot- connection to body, land, great water, a spirit or something greater than one’s-self. My office has soil, air, water, and light present to remind us of our connection to these things. I encourage my clients, and I make sure to foster my own connection to these things to sustain my business and my practice, because being a therapist, heck, being a person in 2026 is hard. As I write this, a very heavy legal trial is happening in Massachusetts that impacts so many of my clients emotionally, we do not have systems in place to support mothers and families in their most vulnerable time. As a society I think we have “moved on” too quickly and have too much denial from the trauma we all experienced from the pandemic. I truly mean nothing political- except everything is political- the pandemic was life-changing and I think we have not sufficiently tended those wounds. Peachtree wellness seeks to bring us back to ancestral wisdom for healing in a modern day context. We offer somatic therapy approaches, body-based movement, and wisdom from land, water, and spirit, using evidence-based practices to transform from wounded to resilient in challenging times.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Anyone can check out my website to learn more about the services offered at Peachtree Wellness, from psychotherapy, to yoga, to reiki, and teaching and consultation to other psychotherapists. https://peachtreewellnessmi.com
Contact Info:
- Website: https://peachtreewellnessmi.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057643231714
