DBT40 Honoree: Kelly Gordon

Title: Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Founder/Owner

Workplace: Embrace Wellness LLC

Age: 35

Kelly Gordon knows all too well how important mental health services are for children and families navigating adversity. As Sussex County’s population continues to drive Delaware toward 1 million residents, she recognized that need was only going to grow.

So the licensed clinical social worker created her private practice in Rehoboth Beach to help families and children struggling with mood disorders and trauma experiences. Through her professional training and personal experiences, she’s able to help her clients organize their feelings, recognize their strengths and build resilience.

Gordon focuses on the importance of relationships in healing and growing from adversity, and strives to form close working relationships with parents so that children’s behaviors can be recognized as symptoms of deeper feelings that need to be met with compassion.

The COVID-19 pandemic added another complex layer for children who may have already been suffering by shifting their social and academic lives, while also forcing them to make sense of widespread loss, grief and fear. When the first cases struck Delaware in March 2020, Gordon shifted her entire practice online in a matter of days so her patients could still receive help.

Gordon also reached out to other therapists to find the best ways to engage people through telehealth, and grew her own network by joining the local Polka Dot Powerhouse, intended for southern Delaware women in business.

Gordon has also been recognized as Coastal Style Magazine’s 2020 Best of Sussex County Mental Health Professional, is a living kidney donor and spent a year working in the Washington, D.C., public school system through an AmeriCorps program.

The mother of two also has offered her expertise to the Moms Offering Moms Support of Coastal Delaware Club, contributes articles to the local Cape Gazette newspaper and is the only registered Circle of Security Parenting educator in Delaware.