476: A Healer's Healing Journey: An Interview with Dr. Julie de Azevedo Hanks

Dr. Julie de Azevedo Hanks has over the past decade-plus become a leading voice in mental health, marriage and family, women's issues, and faith journey circles. As a therapist and clinician, she has worked with many people, most of them Latter-day Saints, and now supervises some fifteen other therapists. She is an author of two books, The Burnout Cure: An Emotional Survival Guide for Overwhelmed Women and The Assertiveness Guide: How to Communicate Your Needs, Set Healthy Boundaries, and Transform Your Relationships. She is a go-to person for many members of the media when they want to talk with someone about Mormon and/or women's issues, including very recently being featured many, many times in stories written in the wake of the MTC sexual abuse scandal and how it has been addressed by the LDS Church and within the community. But her earliest steps into a spotlight came through her musical gifts and a songwriter and singer, a career that led to many songs and albums, and that garnered her many awards in LDS and faith-based music circles. Julie seems to have led a charmed life, built always for a public life. But, like all of us, life has not been without its challenges. She has faced heartbreak and sadness, loss of a sense of her own place within the universe and God's plan, difficulties navigating career and family and church and all it's pre-prescribed roles for women, and much more. All of these, however, have been essential in her becoming such an effective therapist and insightful and sought-after teacher and speaker. In this in-depth interview about her life and careers, and her family and church lives, as well, Julie allows us a glimpse into her own journey with faith and Mormonism and how, through many difficulties, she has come to the grounding she has found—a sense of calling to this particular life among these particular people. As you listen, I know that you'll be moved by her story, her emotion, her courage, and her emergence as a healer extraordinaire.