Meet Gig Harbor Counselor, Lani Kish, LMHC

I grew up in a military family, married into the military, and both of my children have served or are serving in the military today.

Being a military daughter and wife meant that for much of my earlier life, I lived outside of the United States.

Most of my time abroad was spent in Europe, the Middle East, and Central America. I am married to my best friend, and we are approaching 40 years of marriage. We have two children—twins (a son and a daughter), and together they have blessed us with many grandchildren.

Lani Kish, MA, LMHC

We began a new chapter in our lives after retirement from the military by moving to Gig Harbor to be closer to family and raise our children in a small community.

We have lived here for well over 20 years now.  We have several animals (dogs and cats)—all rescue pets; we rescued them from our children when they went into the military.

My husband and I are active in our faith community and are blessed to have four generations of family living in Gig Harbor.

I spent the first half of my life living a military lifestyle, with many of those years overseas, which allowed me to learn about multicultural diversity.

Once back in the United States, I spent over 24 years working inside the real estate market as a financial professional, becoming a Certified Mortgage Planning Specialist and worked to assist clients in structuring financial instruments for their largest investments, their home.

After retiring from the financial industry, I spent five years working for a non-profit organization as a lay counselor, which was the impetus for me to move into a clinical practice as a Licensed Mental Health Professional.

After lay counseling, I began work at a county community mental health agency.

This afforded me the opportunity to work with a diverse group of clients and serve the community in an area that had an abundance of needs. From there, I transitioned into one of the largest community mental health agencies in the Pacific Northwest, challenging me with some extremely difficult cases.

This created the drive to pursue continuing education in order to target some of the more difficult aspects of mental health, namely trauma.

I have been fortunate to work with a vast array of presenting disorders and in the last few years have engaged in voluntary skilled supervision and consultation to grow even more as a professional clinical therapist.

I believe that iron sharpens iron and as a therapist, no matter how experienced, continuing consultation is an imperative, if one wants to stay informed and on the cutting edges of knowledge and practice.

I made the decision to move from community mental health into private practice in order to maintain balance in my personal life and go further in depth with my client’s presenting issues.