Hi, I’m Laura A. Thor, a seeker, a listener who helps people find their way.

My Story

I was raised with a strong sense of religious faith. In first grade in Catholic school, I got a “C” in Religion class, not the “A” I thought I deserved for asking Sister and Father a lot of unacceptable questions. I think there may have been a conversation between Sister and my parents. So of course I studied religion in college, got a scholarship to ministry studies in Berkeley, CA, but when the money fell through, I worked breifly in parish adult ed, then a bookstore, and later became a therapist.

I eventually trained as a spiritual director and earned my doctorate in ministry, in no particular religion. I affiliate as a Reconstructionist and Renewal Jewish woman who is fluent and honoring of Catholic spirituality as well. (I am not a Messianic Jew.) My relationship with G-d is fluid and growing. I argue and ask lots of questions of God, Whoever or Whatever That is (or isn’t). I get responses eventually, in dreams or events or a subtle interior change toward more trust, less angst. I am trying to avoid the abyss of post-modern views of religion, while definitely seeing beyond religious narratives for their deeper personal meanings in our hunger toward transcendence. I’m informed by Jungian thought, my love of contemporary Jewish mystic Etty Hillesum, Christian mystics like Teihard, Julian of Norwich, and the great Sufi teacher, Rumi. An intensive 10 days learning under Matthew Fox in my 20s turned my life around.

Life is surprising, is love, is joyous, is hard, is dear.

I serve both cisgender and transgender spiritual seekers. As a cis-het White elder, I understand that I do not walk in the shoes of transgender people. I was gifted with 35 years of work with transgender adults by accident, because I married a wonderful man who… was a woman. It was the ‘90s, and this was all new and frightening to me. What’s a black-and-white thinker to do? Stay? Leave? Where does love fit in? What is marriage? What about my boundaries? What would my family/ employer do if I ‘came out’ as a wife of a transgender person—in 1992? My spiritual director helped me ‘hear’ the deep-down voice of my soul. He challenged the false certainty I had about many things in life.

I began to open up to whatever Life/God/Love/Compassion had to teach me. Today, my former spouse and I are no longer married, but we are closer than we had ever been all those years ago. Love endures in many ways. I am also open to serving wives in spiritual discernment, honestly and without judgment.

Spiritual and religious trauma is a terrible thing imposed on transgender people. I learned from experts about gender dysphoria, joined WPATH, and presented at USPATH once I grew in expertise about spiritual needs of transgender people of faith. Spirituality in some form or another, not necessarily religious, is a part of most human beings, and spiritual health is a birthright. I became an affirming, educated and compassionate therapist to transgender adults searching out what their God is doing in their lives. In my experience of counseling thousands of transgender adults of faith (Mormon, Catholic, Jewish, fundamentalist “refugee”, Lutheran, mainline Protestant, and more) and none, I saw that Church and doctrines about gender were outdated, uninformed by science, and harmful. Eventually, writing and teaching by people like me led religious leaders to actually meet with transgender people and draw new conclusions.

My article in the spiritual director journal, Presence, was the first to present transgender people as having a spiritual birthright, and we spiritual directors as potential spiritual midwives. Supporting people with gender dysphoria as they discerned what their best next step should be, was a joy to me. Not all transitioned. Some found they didn’t need to, and others couldn’t tolerate the social and career costs. Others realized something else was at the root of their pain, and that it wasn’t gender dysphoria after all. Things take time and safety to unpack. I am honored to have witnessed and furthered each person’s developing self-knowledge and self-acceptance, in whatever direction was best for them.

Now, having passed the torch to a new generation of gender therapists, I work at helping not only transgender people, but all adults who seek to understand what their spiritual longings need of them.

What is drawing you along as your life unfolds? What do you choose that gives you meaning and purpose? That’s the work of spiritual direction.

Another aspect that has drawn me further into offering spiritually-integrative therapy is my own gratitude for having therapists and spiritual mentors who respected my yearning to trust life better than I sometimes do. Like most of us, I want to trust that, as mystic Julian of Norwich wrote, and as paraphrased by John Lennon, “all will be well.” Which at face value seems naive and insulting to anyone who has suffered horrible things. There’s a conundrum there.

Suicide Loss is a Complex Grief

I now specialize in the awful, yearning grief of suicide loss. Recovery is a difficult and lonely journey back to feeling like living again. This is both a psychological and spiritual task. While I refer to therapists those whose suffering requires more than spiritual direction can provide, I can offer hope and succor and understanding of this loneliest of spiritual landscapes.

I’ve been through many suicides. My sister was just 21 and I was 26, when she died of suicide. I lost an old friend I’d known since junior high school, a second former spouse, and my daughter’s long-term partner, like a member of our family, all to suicide. Each person had unique reasons, private to themselves, but all were in anguish. Each time, I struggled to make sense, to sort out if I had a role in their deaths, and to avoid falling into despair. What can hope possibly look like when the worst thing you imagined—-or never imagined— for your loved one, has come to pass?

I’ve learned there is no closure with suicide, but there is healing, enough to feel love and not just horror when we remember them. I offer help and hope of healing yourself back into life again. There is a biology of suicide, and learning it can help you deal with guilt and put it in its proper place. Existential questions wake us in the night, and we want to avoid nihilism. We want to know, are they ok? Some of us find solace in religion, or don’t. Some of us have nothing to lean on at all. The platitudes we hear at funerals and memorial services are not helpful, and are even insulting—though people mean well. They feel helpless or uncomfortable with our abyss of sadness, guilt and pain. Where do we find meaning in our own lives once more?

Together, we can explore what gives you hope, and how to feel alive again, with purpose, meaning, and a renewed capacity for happiness, even though the worst has happened. You may rail against God, if you believe in God, or against mental illness, or whatever it is you blame. It is normal. It is OK. At the same time, you need to know you will get through this. Why do it alone? Suicide loss is best understood by someone who has been there.

Complex Grief has recently been recognized as a mental health diagnosis. In some ways, this is unfortunate because it can result in the pathologizing of a normal, necessary human response to loss. Normal grief does not go away (though mourning does); it mellows and softens us and opens our hearts to greater compassion and life. Grief is the price we pay for loving. And when we grieve, we need support, whenever it revisits us.

This is my work now.

Education

• Doctor of Ministry (DMin): Pastoral & Spiritual Psychotherapy, Graduate Theological Foundation, 2014

• Spiritual Director Training: Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality, 2010

• Jewish studies, Melton School of Jewish Learning, 2009, plus ‘graduate’ continuing education

• Master of Social Work, University of Minnesota, 1988

• Bachelor of Arts, Catholic Theology, University of St. Catherine, 1981

Licensure

• LCSW: Colorado Licensed Clinical Social Worker 989689, 1990-2022, retired

Affiliations & Distinctions

• American Association of Pastoral Counselors, Fellow (now ACPE, Assn for Clinical Pastoral Education)

• Fund for Theological Education’s North American Ministerial Fellowship, 1981 Recipient

• Phi Beta Kappa

• Spiritual Directors International

• Spiritual Direction Colorado

• American Society for Bioethics & Humanities

Published Article Highlights

• Article: ‘Living in the Image of God: Transgender People in Spiritual Direction, in Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction, December 2013.

• Article: ‘The Heart of Atonement’ in ‘The Living Pulpit‘ April-June, 2007

• Journal, ‘Nature and Grace: A Journal of Catholic Spirituality and Well-Being’ published quarterly from Fall 1996–Summer 1998: “On Being Seen, Known, and Loved: psychotherapy in service of soul”; “The Paradox of Intimacy: our fear of the shadow”; “Lenten Journeying: losing the ego, finding the indwelling Christ”; “Of Faith and Reality: dis-illusion and re-enchantment”

• Blog: Nature and Grace Journal

Continuing Education Highlights (recent)

• Sacred Work: Science, Religion & Human Health, Emory U Woodruff Health Sciences Ctr for Spiritual Health, 2022

• Wrestling With the Legacy of Eugenics in Medicine in Society, A. Stern, MacLean Ctr for Clinical Medical Ethics, U-Chicago, 2022

• Discernment in Troubled Times: Ignatian Wisdom, N Collura, Spiritual Directors Int’l, 2022

• Walking the Tight-rope: Navigating Requests for Aid-in-dying (MAID) in the suicidal patient, J. Treem, MD, Ctr for BioEthics and humanities, U-CO School of Medicine, 2022

• Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom, L Dugdale MD, Ctr for Clinical Medical Ethics, Columbia U, 2022

• COVID: Beyond the Pandemic: A Wave of Emotions, T. Friel MD, LeHigh Valley Health Network, 2022

• Beyond the Basics: BioEthics in care of Disabled & Elderly hospital patients, Sutter Health, American Society for Bioethics & Humanities, 2022

• Health, Hope and Despair, King’s College, 2022

• True Role of Autonomy in Medicine, U-MN, Ctr for BioEthics, 2022

• Medical Aid in Dying: Minnesota End-of-Life Option Act, Pro and Con, 2022

• Supreme Court: Abortion and US Constitutional Law, M. Villanova, MD & M. Wilson O’Reilly, McGowan Ctr for Ethics and Social Responsibility, Kings College, 2022

• Healthcare Ethics: Responding to the Many Faces of Suffering, 2021

• Varieties of Religious Experience, Spiritual Direction-Colorado, 2021

• Soul of the Helper: Contemplating & Integrating the Intersection Between Spirituality & Mental Health, H. Oxlander, Baylor U, Assn for Clinical Pastoral Education, 2022

• Spiritual Formation & the Ethical Self, Catharyn Baird, JD, 2021

• On Mercy & Forgiveness, Mirabai Starr, 2021

• Shame in the Therapeutic Space, Christiane Sanderson, 2021

• Judaism and Biomedical Ethics, Florence Melton Scholars course, 2019

• Enneagram uses in spiritual companioning, 2019, 2022

• Forgiveness in Modern Jewish Thought, Reconstructing Judaism Rabbinic School, webinar, 2018

• American Association of Pastoral Counselors Annual Conference, presenter, “Living in the Image of God: Pastoral Counseling with Transgender People of Faiths,” Decatur, GA, 2017

• Society for Pastoral Theology conference, Practicing Public Pastoral Theologies in Contexts of Difference, paper presentation, “Embodiment in pastoral counseling,” Denver, CO, 2015

Relevant Employment History

• Private psychotherapy practice 1990-2022

• The Centre for Behavioral Health, Denver, CO, 1999-2006, clinician

• Human Services Inc. Employee Assistance Program, Denver, CO, 1997-1999, clinician

• HSI Counseling Services, Denver, CO 1992-1996, clinician

• Charter Centennial Peaks Hospital, Louisville, CO, 1991-1992, clinician and educator

• Private Practice, Western slope of Colorado, 1990-1991

• West River Mental Health Center, Spearfish, SD 1988-1990, clinician

• St. Thomas Catholic Church, St. Paul Park, MN, 1981-1983