Meet Laura Marques Brown, LCPC, Latinx Ecotherapist, Couples Therapist & Trauma Therapist in Hyattsville, MD

Oi, I'm Laura.

And feelings are my forte.

I am a seeker of deep and authentic connection, not afraid to say the things that others won’t, and a committed advocate for the steadfast work of learning to love yourself, unconditionally.

I am the daughter of immigrants, born between two soils. A first-generation Latiné, originally from the land of the Mbya & Tekohá (Guarani) Indigenous People on the Eastern border of Brasil, also known as São Paulo. I now reside on the stolen land of the Piscataway Conoy & Nacotchtank (Anacostan) People, also known as Silver Spring, Maryland. My office is in Hyattsville, and I hold ecotherapy sessions in Wheaton. I also seeing people virtually throughout Maryland and Virginia.

Although I am a clinically trained Therapist and Ecotherapist, I have been healing from this training since my formal education ended. My instruction was rooted in settler frameworks, often decontextualized and lacking awareness of intersectional oppression, colonial trauma and how the systems that it breeds intend to keep people, especially marginalized people, suffering.

I found the absence of this context disturbing. It's like trying to understand a canyon without talking about the river that carved it, or a branch on the ground without the tree it fell from. In my training, people were treated as the canyon and the branch, and the river and the tree were left out. When therapy ignores the forces that shaped us, it quietly tells people that their pain is a personal failure.

I looked around my own community and couldn't find the kind of therapy I needed: a space where oppression, ancestry, culture, and land weren't side topics but the heart of the work. So I created it.

Natureza Therapy is that space. It's a practice where you can bring your whole story, including your family, your identities, the soil your people come from, and the systems you navigate every day, and have all of it held with care. Here, context is where healing begins.

I'm not doing this work alone. I'm part of a growing community of anti-oppressive, outspoken therapists working to decolonize this field in service of you. You can listen to some of our conversations here.

I specialize in anti-oppressive therapy and feel especially attuned to clients who have been harmed by previous therapy, or who are wary of trusting another therapist with their most sacred parts. I see you, and I've been there. After the harm I experienced in grad school, I found healing with anti-oppressive healers and teachers who truly understood me. I know what it feels like to be transformed with the guidance of someone who gets it, and that's what I want to offer you.

ways we can work together

Individual Trauma Therapy

For adult (25+) children of immigrants and people of the global majority who are tired of surviving and ready to start living. We explore how intergenerational trauma, assimilation, and oppression live in your body, and how to put down what was never yours to carry.

[Learn about individual therapy →]

Ecotherapy

Nature is our co-facilitator in this work. Ecotherapy brings our sessions outdoors, into relationship with the land, so your body can return to it's place of original belonging, and you can be held by the more than human world.

[Learn about ecotherapy →]

Couples Therapy

For partners who want to break inherited patterns together. Drawing on Transformative Couples Therapy (AEDP for couples) and IFS-(Intimacy from the Inside Out), we explore how each of your histories, cultures, and parts show up in your relationship.

[Learn about couples therapy →]

Brainspotting Intensives

Extended sessions for when weekly therapy feels too slow, or when you want to go deeper, in less time. Brainspotting is a body-brain based approach (same targets as EMDR) that helps process trauma in meaningful ways.

[Learn about Brainspotting intensives →]

Immigration Evaluations

Psychological evaluations for immigration cases, completed with cultural humility and a deep understanding of what migration costs a person, a family and community. [asylum cases only.]

[Learn about immigration evaluations →]

Groups

Our bi-monthly Café y Cultura Healing Circle meets in-person to connect on the stories and experiences that make us unique, and bring us together in our resiliency and power.

[Learn about groups →]

Let’s Begin