Warm, Soothing Squarespace Website for a California-Based LMFT
Melissa Morais Parr, LMFT helps people who struggle with anxiety and depression, and her website lets therapy-seekers know that she breaks the traditional psychotherapy mold to provide a holistic approach to mental healthcare.
Melissa used the Folk template to create a soothing online home for her practice; from the earth-toned color palette to the textural photos, her website feels like a warm hug!
Read on to learn more about Melissa’s experience of using the Folk template to build her own psychotherapy website on Squarespace!
Your name, pronouns + credentials: Melissa Morais Parr, LMFT (she/her)
Website URL: www.mmptherapy.com
Where in the world are you located? Carlsbad (San Diego County), CA
What do you love about the work that you do?
I just love everything about therapy. I always feel very connected to my clients and I always find myself in awe of human resilience. People go through some really difficult, tough things and yet we continue to persevere. Many times, people start therapy in a pretty low space, they feel like failures, that there is just something "wrong" with them and they will be in a very negative space. I like to do a lot of teaching in my therapy, especially around anxiety and triggers and what's happening in a brain-body approach. I find this really helps destigmatize a lot of things and makes it not so personal- it's not you that is wrong or faulty, it's your brain and body reacting from your past experiences. When we have a better understanding of what is happening, we can be more compassionate with ourselves and learn how to respond in ways that can help us heal. I love witnessing when my clients start making these connections and make real, meaningful changes.
Which Hold Space Creative template did you purchase?
Why did you choose this template?
Immediately when I saw it, I just loved the way it looked- something about the squares and outlines just spoke to me. Also, as a big Taylor Swift fan (especially the album folklore), the name definitely got me!
What prompted you to choose my templates over others?
Every one of your templates just has a nice aesthetic that I feel really aligns with therapy. I have a hard time putting words to it- but each template just feels nice and honestly, I think I could have gone with any of them and created a great website. Other templates from other businesses I've seen just never felt right. I've been marketed to by other bigger therapy website designers and they'd send me examples of their portfolio and I never liked any of their websites- there would always be something that just felt off.
I did hold off at first, as this template was more geared towards a group practice, which I do not have. However, with my experience of playing around on Squarespace, I knew I could still customize it to fit my needs. I decided that one of my goals in 2023 was to revamp my website to make it more professional looking.
How did you feel about your previous website or the website building process before purchasing a template from Hold Space Creative?
I actually really enjoy working with Squarespace and experimenting with different designs, placement, and copy. With that said, all the tweaking I would constantly do to my website I just felt that it still have a "DIY" look to it. It just needed that "oomph" that propped it up to feel more professional. I also felt that some of my pages felt a little disjointed and didn't align well with the others.
How do you feel now that you've published your new website?
I love how my new website looks and I know each page holds up as a standalone (while before, I sometimes would cringe thinking if someone landed on one of my ancillary pages as the opening they could be turned off).
How would you describe the process of using a Hold Space Creative template (from purchase to publish)?
It's very straightforward. I really like the [color guide] in Canva to plug in your brand colors to help guide you for their placement. Watching the instruction video of it too was very helpful. All the information is there to guide you in a step-by-step process. While it can certainly feel like a lot when you first look at it, once you start to follow the steps, it's very straightforward.
What do you hope your new website does for you and your private practice?
Before, I would continually "tweak" my website, as I just never felt satisfied with it. Now I feel that I can really just leave the main design alone and instead focus on other areas such as creating more blog posts. I am also finishing up an Anxiety Course I've been working on. I'm planning to expand more in online courses and now that I have a more professional looking website, I'm hoping that will help with not just attracting therapy clients, but also for those that want to go the course-route.
Get started with the Folk template:
