The Marked Chair.

TL;DR - You're trained to erase the loss and move forward. Cole Shiflett never did. It's the most honest thing I've seen in 20 years of this work.

Hi everyone,

What do you do when the thing you built gets called a death center? Cole Shiflett didn't defend it. He didn't rebrand it. Every time Solstice lost someone, he posted it on Facebook, with a name attached, while every other center was polishing their stats and showcasing their wins. And when COVID finally took Solstice down, the first thing he asked himself was "without this, who am I?" That question, and what he did with it, is the most honest thing I've heard a practitioner say in years.

That's what this issue is about. The Marked Chair. The one a client never came back to. The practice you shuttered. The colleague you lost. The version of the work you thought you'd be doing forever. Most of us are trained to remove the chair and rearrange the room. This is for the ones willing to leave the mark.

The Instinct Is Always to Erase

When a client dies, the clinical instinct is containment. You process it in supervision, maybe with your team, and then you move forward. You don't post it publicly. You manage optics, for the practice, for the families still watching, for your own sense of professional competence.

When a practice closes, the instinct is identical. You reframe it. You call it an evolution. You update your bio.

Both moves make sense. And both cost you the same thing. The mark. The proof that something real occupied that space, that you were genuinely in it with another human being, not just managing a caseload or running a business. When you erase the loss, you erase the evidence of the investment, and without that evidence, over time, you start losing the thread of why you're doing this at all.

What Cole Did Instead

Cole told me Solstice got labeled a death center because they posted every loss publicly. Not to perform grief. Because those people had sat in the chairs and pretending otherwise would have been a lie about the work. His words: "We wanted to honor that person, honor their illness, because they meant something."

The cost was real. The reputation hit was real. People who knew nothing about what actually happened inside Solstice made judgments based on the body count Cole refused to hide. He posted anyway.

When Solstice closed he didn't spin it or rebrand it. He sat in "without this, who am I?" until the answer came back honest. That question matters because the answer tells you exactly where your identity actually lived. If it was in the structure, the title, the program name, losing it will be destabilizing in a way that takes years to recover from. If it was in the investment in human beings, the loss doesn't take the self with it. The marked chair is how you know the difference, because you don't mark what you weren't really sitting with.

The Credential That Can't Be Faked

Grief in this field, real and named and visible, is not a liability. It is the only professional credential that cannot be manufactured.

You can inflate a recovery rate. You can spin a closure. You can build a brand that looks nothing like the inside of your actual practice. What you cannot do is fake having lost someone and choosing to say so anyway. What you cannot fake is sitting in "without this, who am I?" and answering it truthfully.

The practitioners who build something that lasts, something people still talk about years after it's gone the way Cole's people still talk about Solstice, are not the ones who avoided loss. They're the ones who marked every chair, who said this person was here, this thing existed, it mattered, and I'm still standing, and leaving the mark is the most honest thing you can do with the work.

My Reads of the Week

They're Calling It Burnout. It's Actually Something Worse.  Not exhaustion. A fracture between who you are and the conditions you're working in. When that coherence breaks, something more fundamental goes with it.

The Thing No One Tells You When a Client Dies  Confidentiality doesn't die with the client. You can't call a friend. You can't post about it. You mourn alone, in the same chair where you saw them last.

What Happens When the Title Is Gone and You Still Have to Show Up  A healthcare executive calls it "professional identity purgatory." Not failure. Not reinvention. Just the disorienting space between who you were and who you haven't become yet.

Wisdom Nugget

Trauma doesn't announce itself. It shows up as overreaction, avoidance, sleeplessness, and emotions that feel bigger than the moment deserves. The latest piece from Atomic Souls breaks down how to spot trauma when it's hiding in plain sight, why therapy isn't a last resort for the desperate but a frontline tool for anyone serious about doing the work, and why the heaviest hitters in recovery, EMDR, CBT, somatic work, are the difference between renaming the pain and actually processing it.

Read more.

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Thanks for reading,

Rachel

p.s. If this is our first introduction, hi, I’m Rachel, founder and CEO of Atomic Souls Counseling. I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor (LPC-S) and a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC). After years in the trenches as a clinician, I discovered that my real passion isn’t just helping clients heal; it’s helping therapists thrive.

I’ve built Atomic Souls into more than a counseling practice; it’s a place where healing and business intelligence meet. I work with therapists, counselors, and practice owners to help them build sustainable, ethical, and profitable practices. Together, we focus on strategy, systems, and the economics of growth the behind-the-scenes work that allows you to keep showing up fully for your clients without burning out.

My approach blends clinical wisdom with business strategy. I coach on everything from pricing models and team structure to marketing, leadership, and scaling, all while maintaining your integrity and purpose. I believe you can be both a gifted clinician and a confident entrepreneur; those two identities don’t have to compete.

Through Atomic Souls, I’ve built a community where mental health professionals support one another, share resources, and turn purpose into sustainable success. Whether you’re just starting out or ready to expand, I’m here to help you build a practice that aligns with your values and fuels your life, not drains it.

If you’re a therapist ready to step into the next chapter of your career with clarity and confidence, let’s connect.

I write about the business of healing: strategy, systems, and soul for therapists who want to build thriving, values-driven practices on my blog.

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