I’m Shannon Lawton-O’Boyle and I’m a licensed social worker and a human sexuality educator with a certificate in trauma treatment and a professional background in perinatal support. 

I believe our sexuality factors into our entire humanity – our physical health, how we relate to others, how we create and define family, the way we view our bodies across the life span, and the way the world imposes ideas onto us. It is a privilege to witness clients unravel and deconstruct, and then empower and redefine for themselves, as individuals or partners, how they wish to move forward in life from these vulnerable intersections.

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Shannon Lawton-O’Boyle enjoys working with individuals and partners to dismantle barriers to joy and connection. She takes an integrative, but mindfulness-based approach to therapy, centering her clients’ strengths and motivations towards desired change. Shannon holds masters’ degrees in social work (MSW) and human sexuality studies (MEd) from Widener University. She is also a member of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT), the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), and a Registered Prenatal Yoga Specialist and RYT-200 with Yoga Alliance. Shannon has advanced training in treating relational and intimacy-related concerns, including having completed Gottman Method Couples Therapy Level I and II.

As a relational therapist, Shannon helps clients gain self-awareness about their reactivities and their environments, develop skills to communicate needs and boundaries, and authentically optimize connection to themselves and others. Shannon’s clinical interests include helping clients with pain and chronic illness, trauma, and anxiety that are occurring in conjunction with sexual dysfunction, desire discrepancy, alt sex and consensually non-monogamous lifestyles, and other barriers commonly experienced by queer folx. Shannon is especially drawn to supporting family systems, including queer and polyam chosen-family systems. In 2021, Shannon was recognized as an Outstanding Ally by the Metro Trans Umbrella Group in St. Louis, MO, one of the largest community organizations in the U.S. serving transgender and gender-expansive humans. She also contributed to “Mind-Body Techniques in Pregnancy and Postpartum”, a 2021 medical review publication in the medical journal of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology. 

In her prior professional life, Shannon worked as a birth and postpartum doula, childbirth educator, and prenatal yoga specialist. She is a mother to four amazing humans, a few squishy fur babies, and some very feminist hens! Shannon is passionate about parenting issues, and has worked extensively with the transitions of pregnancy and parenting in body, mind, and relationship. Her work co-parenting radically-accepting humans and serving pregnant families, pointed her in the direction of supporting client’s rights to bodily autonomy, informed consent, healing, and healthy relationships.

SPECIALIZATIONS: RELATIONSHIP DISTRESS, NAVIGATING CONSENSUAL NON-MONOGAMY/POLYAMORY, PELVIC PAIN, PERINATAL MENTAL HEALTH, TRAUMA + SOMATIC INTEGRATION, LGBTQ+ AFFIRMING CARE.