Laura Duncan, LICSW
Founder/Practice Director
(She/Her)

Second Generation Feminist

My mother was an ardent feminist.  She spent much of the 1950’s through the 1970’s active in women’s rights movements from advocating for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to working with the National Organization of Women (NOW), in their early days.  I grew up listening to her talk about the truisms in Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique; her anger and resistance to the status quo; palpable.  She was a journalist and newspaper reporter in her 20’s and 30’s and often wrote pieces about ongoing sexual discrimination and harassment that she both experienced and witnessed.

As a single mother in the 1980’s, she took a higher paying job to better support us that required long days and long commutes.  Although I didn’t recognize it at the time, she carried “The Mental Load” all by herself; my father really only sharing in the “work,” when she pushed.

She’d always struggled with her mental health, and the grind took its’ toll.  With no other help from family or systems to sustain and support her, she suffered greatly.  Therapy back then was considered an odd thing to do, and so she was on her own, in all the ways.

I’ve been a licensed clinical social worker now for 25 years, graduating from Boston University’s School of Social Work in 2001.  My career has included working within inner-city public-school systems to writing million-dollar grant applications for programs serving marginalized students in public higher education, to working as a therapist in community mental health settings.  In 2013, I opened a solo private practice with a specialty in treating perinatal mood disorders.  After experiencing a pregnancy loss and then postpartum OCD after the birth of my daughter, I realized how lacking resources were for women in that phase of life.  In 2018, I decided to expand my practice and opened Women’s Counseling of Nashua.  Since that time, we’ve also expanded the populations we work with to include all marginalized genders, LGBTQIA+ populations and BIPOC folks – very much in the spirit of the mission held by The National Organization of Women, the organization my mother had cared for so much.

My personal mission, and what drives me now to continue to do this work, is to have the ability to offer therapeutic support on a larger scale for women and other marginalized groups who see themselves carrying the bulk of the Mental Load.  Those who feel the systems pushing them down – the lack of affordable childcare and health care, sexual harassment and discrimination still so entrenched, salaries and professional opportunities still not on par with men, a rolling back of reproductive rights.  I want our clients to know that they’re not alone.  We see you because we feel it, too.

Women-Led Business Coach

Women’s counseling has grown to about 25 clinicians with a gross annual revenue of just under 3 million.  I’ve gained invaluable leadership and business development skills in my role over the years.  I’ve been a student of Maureen Hermann of the Group Practice Exchange and Ken Clark of Semi-Private Practice for years; both own large and successful group practices and are leaders in the space of helping other therapists grow their practices.  I enjoy working with women who are in leadership roles in their workplaces and need guidance around navigating the many nuances involved in leading others in various business environments.  And of course, women who are in solo behavioral health practices or those who would like to grow into a group setting.  My strength lies in culture building and practice / program design and implementation.

In my free time I enjoy helping my daughter promote her acting career.  Our living room transforms into a semiprofessional studio whenever she has an audition.  She also loves screenwriting and photography.  Her writing often portrays strong female characters; many working to overcome various forms of adversity. I’m hopeful that she’s on her way to taking the baton as a third-generation feminist, in her own way.  There’s still much work to do.