Our origin story

Creating Kind Therapy Inc.
By Lundi Ramos

I was learning to offer therapy I could not afford to receive.

It was winter, 2012.

Living my identities fully meant risking almost everything—community, school, livelihood. At the same time, I was studying clinical mental health care, gathering myself together while learning to support others.

The field I entered was not designed for someone like me: marginalized, neurodiverse, surviving on a single income. Perhaps you know that sense—when the truth of who you are collides with the structures around you.

My graduate internship placed me as manager of a nonprofit group practice in one of Colorado’s wealthiest counties. Yet even there, most people could not afford our rates. Many of the therapists themselves could not afford therapy.

The organization assured us it was doing its best. But for me, the numbers did not add up. And when the numbers do not add up, the heart knows something deeper is wrong.

Insurance reimbursement was delayed, sometimes by six months, if it came at all. My salary was $38,000. Rent in Denver climbed each season. Groceries, loans, daily survival—it was impossible to balance. I worked three jobs at once simply to remain afloat.

This quiet struggle is not unique. Most therapists carry their own version of the same story: trying to hold others while scarcely holding themselves.

The system did not work. Not for therapists. Not for clients. And those I most wanted to serve—transgender people, immigrants, sex workers, those without safety—were left on the margins.

I came to see how often “the system” is spoken of as if it were immovable, faceless. In reality, systems are shaped by people. They are sustained by choices—sometimes conscious, often unexamined. Culture does not become toxic by accident; it is permitted, excused, or protected into being.

The U.S. mental health industry speaks of care, yet its structures often break the very spirits they claim to heal. When convenience is chosen over compassion, or profit over people, we are not living in “the real world.” We are upholding a world that asks others to diminish in order for us to feel secure.

We say we care about mental health. But unless we are willing to change the systems that harm it, our care is incomplete.