Content created to heal.
The trauma-informed creative process starts here.
Former Oprah Show Producer, Erin Barbossa, LMSW has been working as a clinical social worker and therapist since 2012. Studying the most buzz worthy topics in mental health for over a decade, and building her practice Motherhood Supported, she has deep knowledge of the latest in relational neuroscience and the foundations of healing.
Erin produces, writes, and provides psychological consultation anywhere stories are being told. The market data leads our direction: podcasters are trusted, we crave suspense and drama in our entertainment, and we constantly scroll.
Mission Driven Storytelling has one intention: to ethically share stories of hope and high quality healing with the largest audience possible.
We need to think broader about our mental health crisis. We need to push our field to do better. Skyrocketing costs, clinician burn out, therapist waitlists, an epidemic of addiction and teen suicide, poor prognosis of recurrence in anxiety and depression, and the highest need for psychotropic medications we’ve ever seen, are all compounded. When we learn more, and it works, we need to share it broadly, quickly. There is suffering we can reach through the screen. A modern campfire, gather around the flickering light, and take in a story of healing.
The longer story, how it all started…
Thanks to a high school broadcast production program, Erin started telling stories through video and editing as a teenager. Her first award winning piece, a PSA to fight drunk driving she shot on her neighborhood street, and a Meals on Wheels PSA featuring her grandfather.
She feel in love with creating content that mattered, and decided to go to Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications to study production, earning a dual major in Television, Radio, and Film, and Psychology. She went on to start her career as NBC Page, working on a variety of shows and special events, from Saturday Night Live, to the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and NBC’s Today Show. Finding the most fulfillment in projects with a mission, she landed a job on the production team at The Oprah Winfrey Show, where she worked the last four seasons of the show’s 25 year run. Her favorite productions including a feature on Portia de Rossi’s eating disorder, and working with veterans with PTSD, for a show called Bravest Military Families with Michelle Obama.
When The Oprah Show ended, she took a break from the chaos of production life to pursue a Master’s in Social Work from Loyola University in Chicago, where she studied children and families, and addiction recovery while working at Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. After starting her family and moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan she received special experiential training in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) from The Relationship Center of Michigan, and worked with complex trauma in the foster and adoption field. She started a solo practice focusing on maternal mental health in 2015 and expanded to a group practice Motherhood Supported in 2021. She continues to study parenting, neurodiversity, and trauma, basing her work in Polyvagal Theory, relational neuroscience, and Internal Family Systems (IFS).
In addition to providing psychotherapy for mothers, Erin launched Mission Driven Storytelling in 2023, evolving into macro social work via storytelling. When she’s not immersed in collective healing, she’s hanging with her husband and two kids, enjoying yoga, long walks, and get aways to her favorite slice of heaven in northern Michigan.