Emphasizing the importance of everyday emotional health in everyone— children, adolescents, and adults — to encourage presence and engagement in daily life.
About Us
Be. Emotional Health offers a holistic approach to emotional wellness, focusing on key areas in the lives of children, adolescents, and adults. We bridge the gap between individual and family well-being, academic success, and community engagement to promote a comprehensive lifestyle approach to emotional health.
Be. Emotional Health provides outpatient therapy and supplemental support services like executive functioning coaching, academic tutoring, educational consultation, sports mentorship, and mindfulness coaching for children, adolescents, adults and families with a variety of emotional health challenges. At times, life can become particularly challenging and people need to feel connected. Connected to themselves, connected to loved ones, and connected to their community. Be. Emotional Health will support you and your family in navigating life’s challenges that keep you from feeling connected. How do we do this? By being a source of guidance, understanding and support as you navigate your emotional health journey. Our expert team of professionals are highly trained in their in evidence-based treatment approaches that challenge your current life circumstances, and encourage you to be present, be engaged, and be healthy in your everyday life.
Who We Serve
Be. Emotional Health provides a wide range of evidence-based treatment approaches and supplemental support services to serve the needs of any client. Our goal is to meet the client where they are in their therapeutic journey, and to curate a therapeutic approach unique to their needs.
Children and Adolescents
We specialize in the emotional and behavioral challenges experienced by children and adolescents. Whether your child is struggling with symptoms of ADHD, anxiety or depression, behavioral challenges, complex trauma, grief and loss, or simply are having a hard time navigating the stress of being a child or adolescent in the world today, Be. Emotional Health utilizes evidenced-based treatment practices in a warm, nurturing and fun environment to support your child in the way they need. Give your child the gift of therapy, and let Be. Emotional Health be a part of their journey!
Adults
Are you struggling with navigating the ever present demands of adulthood? Are things that you used to find enjoyable no longer holding your interest? Are you often consumed with worry or fear about your job, your family, your social connections, or life in general? Have you experienced a traumatic life event that overshadows your ability to be present in your daily life? If so, then you deserve to seek support and become engaged in the therapeutic process. Be. Emotional Health values the importance of taking care of yourself and finding value in being present in your daily life.
Couples Therapy
Individuals grow and develop throughout adulthood, and continue to evolve as individuals when they enter into committed relationships. Even the healthiest relationships sometimes struggle in navigating the dynamics within their marriage while maintaining their sense of self. Be. Emotional Health focuses on building effective communication strategies, establishing healthy boundaries, and growing as an individual, parent, and couple within the family system.
Family Therapy
Family Therapy is an evidenced-based therapeutic approach that focuses on the improvement of dynamics within an entire family system. While one individual might be experiencing the more obvious emotional health symptoms, family therapists believe that there is not one identified patient in the family, but patterns of behavior and communication that contribute to unhealthy interactions in the family. The goal of family therapy is to create positive and necessary change in the family system to allow all members in the family to be present, engaged, and healthy in the family environment.
Educational Consultation
Over the course of a year, students spend about 1,000 hours in a classroom. Academic and learning challenges can significantly impede one’s confidence, self concept, and emotional health. Be. Emotional Health’s educational consultants are a valuable resource if your child is struggling academically and qualifies for educational accommodations in the school setting or if you wish to learn more about accommodations that may be available based on their academic and emotional health needs. Educational consultants can also be particularly helpful if your child has struggled in an academic setting and you wish to explore alternative academic placements and services. You are your child’s best advocate, and Be. Emotional Health has amazing educational consultants to support you in navigating your child’s academic and emotional health journey.
Academic Tutoring
Children do well if they can, and the pride that comes with academic achievement is imperative to one’s emotional well-being. Be. Emotional Health values the strong correlation between academic success and emotional health. Whether your child has a diagnosed learning disability that impedes achievement, or simply struggles in a particle academic subject, our tutors are highly trained in providing effective academic support and intervention in reading, writing and math. Contact Be. Emotional Health to schedule a 60-minute academic assessment for tutoring services today!
Executive Functioning Coaching
Executive Functioning is the umbrella term used to for the 11 core skills that help individuals regulate thoughts and actions to achieve desired goals. These are learned cognitive skills like time management, working memory, emotional regulation, organization, focus and attention, and decision-making to name a few. All individuals acquire these skills as they mature and develop, and just like any other learned skill some individuals struggle to develop them more than others. Executive functioning coaches work with children, adolescents and adults to develop strategies and interventions that are unique to the core deficit that is lagging at home, school or in the community. Executive functioning coaching can be offered individually or in a group setting and serves as an invaluable tool in learning to regulate thoughts and actions to achieve set goals.
Our Team
Ashley Morgan Soukup, MA, LMFT
Founder & Clinical Director
With over 15 years of experience in working with children, adolescents, adults and families, Ashley is excited to introduce Be. Emotional Health as an outpatient therapeutic practice that focuses on the importance of connection. After graduating with her MA in Clinical Counseling Psychology with a concentration in Marriage and Family Therapy from LaSalle University in 2010, Ashley had a goal to provide high quality mental health and educational support services to the Richmond community. Whether she is working with a young child, teen, adult, couple, or even an entire family, the therapeutic process is most successful with the client feels they are connected to a clinician that values them for who they are and assists them in identifying and nurturing their strengths.
MORE ABOUT ASHLEY
Ashley utilizes experiential engagement techniques and a direct therapeutic approach to working with individuals and families. She is strength-based and action-oriented in her style which means that she focuses on building confidence within her clients while identifying action steps to help her clients and families get to where they want to be. Their goals are their own and Ashley values being part of the therapeutic process. She enjoys working with individuals of all ages who struggle with anxiety or depression, emotional and behavioral challenges, substance use concerns and everyday life issues that impact a family. She specializes in working with children and adolescents with ADHD and values the importance of collaboration with the entire family and educational support team to develop executive functioning interventions and strategies that will help the child feel successful at home, school and in the community.
In addition, Ashley has extensive expertise in working with individuals of all ages who have experience acute and complex trauma, and grief and loss. Ashley is trained in Trauma Art Narrative Therapy (TANT) and Trauma Focused-Cognitive Behavior Therapy (TF-CBT), and often uses experiential writing techniques to assist the individual in understanding their emotional experiences related to the traumatic event. Most importantly, Ashley works to help individuals who have experienced acute and complex trauma believe that it is something that has happened to them but not who they are.
In conjunction with Ashley’s private practice work, she has had the privilege of serving as a part-time middle school counselor at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, VA. This work has solidified her belief in the correlation between emotional health and academic success for children and adolescents. All children want to do well academically and if they are confident in their abilities and have a strong support system then they are more likely to succeed. This is why proactive therapeutic support is beneficial to young people as it provides the skills needed to develop self confidence and resilience.
When Ashley is not providing therapy to the Richmond community, she is spending time with her husband and two energetic boys! Whether they are hiking and fishing, cheering on their favorite sports teams, or at one of many sports practices, Ashley is most happy when she is present in the moment and engaged in the community with her friends and family.
Sarah Kidd Billeter, MS Special Education, General Curriculum K-12
Orton-Gillingham Certified Reading Tutor & Educational Consultant
Sarah has over 15 years of experience working with students with disabilities in the public school setting and in private tutoring. After graduating from Radford University with her Masters in Special Education in 2010, Sarah began her lifelong dream of working with early elementary students with disabilities and embarked on her teaching journey with Hanover County Public Schools. Sarah has always loved working with children, especially those with learning or emotional differences. She enjoys seeing them work hard towards both academic and behavioral goals and teaching them strategies that assist them in achieving those goals. Sarah has focused her instruction heavily in the areas of reading and writing, emotional regulation, social skills and executive functioning skills. Sarah has experience working with students with various disabilities including, but not limited to, Developmental Delay, Specific Learning Disabilities, Autism, Emotional Disabilities and students
diagnosed with ADHD/ADD.
MORE ABOUT SARAH
In 2022, after noticing obvious gaps in her student’s understanding of ‘how words work’, she became curious about different methods of teaching Reading and Writing. Sarah sought out Orton-Gillingham (OG) training through the Virginia Department of Education and went through 30 hours of classroom training with an OG certified instructor. Sarah has used this training and knowledge to implement multi-sensory strategies into her classroom reading instruction and has seen firsthand the immense progress her students have made using this method of learning how to read, write and spell. Watching students begin to understand the “why” behind the ways words are spelled and read is a miraculous thing to see! Using this multi-sensory approach not
only solidifies a student’s understanding of reading and spelling, but gives them the confidence they need to try new and more difficult tasks in other areas of their school day.
During her 15 years in education, Sarah took a small pause in teaching and was a Coordinator for Special Education for a public elementary school in Chesterfield County for 3 years. During this time, Sarah was able to gain a better understanding about the family side of special education meetings and learned how vital it is for families to be completely informed about all of the options they have available to them. This short break in teaching gave Sarah a newfound passion for helping families understand the entirety of the special education process, especially those who are just beginning their journey. While that passion ultimately led her back to the classroom, hoping she could merge her love of instruction and family support, she has noticed the need being much bigger than just those families on her caseload. Sarah feels that it is incredibly important for parents to have someone in their corner to guide them through understanding of all of the components of this process as it pertains to their child in particular, to be a sounding board for their questions and concerns, and to work together to assist them in making the best informed decisions for their child’s educational needs.
When Sarah is not teaching or tutoring, she is spending time with her husband and 2 children, Harper and Calvin. Sarah usually spends her time driving the kids around town to their various sports practices/games and after school activities or enjoying a good board game or card game…until ultimately, it turns a bit too competitive! Her favorite place to be, other than home, is at the beach in the warm sun! An important sport in her family is football and in their home, they root unapologetically for three teams: the Blue Star Cowboys, the Virginia Tech Hokies and the Detroit Lions!
Julie Oliver, MEd., Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
Executive Functioning Coach & Educational Consultant
Julie Oliver is a dedicated educator and experienced leader with over 15 years of experience supporting students with dyslexia and related learning differences. Grounded in the belief that all students can learn – and that those with learning differences bring unique strengths and perspectives – Julie’s work emphasizes relationship building, holistic education, structured literacy instruction, and community support.
As Director of Middle School at The New Community School in Richmond, Virginia, Julie has transformed the division by fostering an inclusive and innovative environment. Her leadership spans curriculum design, faculty development, and student life programming, all aimed at empowering students to discover their passions and reach their fullest potential. She has also spearheaded initiatives in admissions, accreditation, and strategic planning, contributing to the school’s mission to support students who think and learn differently.
MORE ABOUT JULIE
Julie’s career began in the classroom, where her passion for teaching students with learning differences was ignited. Over a decade of teaching experience includes roles at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, where she developed and implemented individualized instructional plans to support diverse learners. As a Middle School Teacher at The New Community School, Julie specialized in designing differentiated instruction for students with dyslexia and related challenges, focusing on executive function, language fundamentals, and metacognitive strategies.
Before that, she served as a Special Education Teacher at Goochland Elementary, Mechanicsville High School, and Pocahontas Middle School. Across these roles, Julie gained extensive experience working with students with a variety of needs, including ADHD, autism, and emotional disabilities. Her work emphasized collaboration with families, the development of IEPs, and the integration of assistive technology to enhance learning outcomes. These years in the classroom not only solidified her instructional expertise but also deepened her understanding of the importance of fostering trust and partnerships with families.
Her teaching and leadership expertise have extended beyond the classroom through professional presentations. Julie has shared her knowledge at conferences such as the Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS) Academic Support Conference and the International Conference of the Learning Disabilities Association. Her workshops on differentiated math instruction, assistive technology, and metacognition have empowered educators to better support their students with learning differences.
Julie’s commitment to educating the whole child is central to her philosophy. She has designed and implemented programs addressing social, emotional, and wellness needs alongside academic growth. By fostering strong partnerships with families and community stakeholders, Julie builds a supportive network that empowers students to thrive both in and out of the classroom.
Julie holds a Master of Education in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Richmond and a Bachelor of Arts in Special Education from High Point University. She maintains professional licensure in Special Education K-12, Middle Education for English and History/Social Studies, with an Administration and Supervision endorsement.
Julie enjoys spending time with her family – her husband, her three kids, and two dogs, exploring the outdoors and traveling, a smattering of recreational sports and long-distance running, and championing practices that celebrate the strengths of every learner.
Michelle Puzon, MSW, LCSW
Outpatient Therapist
With over 15 years of experience in working with children, adolescents, adults and families, Michelle is excited to be joining the Be. Emotional Health team. Michelle graduated with a master’s degree in social work in 2009 from Virginia Commonwealth University and went on to obtain her clinical license. Michelle has extensive experience in working with children with chronic medical conditions in assisting both the child and family adjust and cope with their diagnoses and how it impacts daily life. Michelle also has extensive experience in providing therapy surrounding grief and loss to children and families and helping them to navigate their new normal. Michelle enjoys working with individuals of all ages who struggle with anxiety or depression and everyday life struggles that impact the family system.
Michelle uses a collaborative, action oriented and strengths-based approach when working with clients. Michelle values rapport building and strongly feels that the client needs to feel comfortable with their therapist for the best therapeutic experience. Michelle works collaboratively with her clients to develop meaningful goals and aids clients in building on their strengths.
When not providing therapy in the community, Michelle enjoys spending time with friends and family, attending sporting events, going to concerts and checking out the Richmond restaurant scene. Michelle is passionate not only about helping other people but also enjoys helping animals of all kinds.