Today we’d like to introduce you to Esmeralda.
Hi Esmeralda , thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I am here today because of my parents’ sacrifice and our immigrant story.
It would be easy for me to say that, as a child, I dreamed of becoming a mental health therapist, a teacher, or even an astronaut. But that wasn’t my story. I was a young child trying to survive, with parents who were doing everything they could to help me survive and, hopefully, thrive. The day I stepped foot in the United States was the day I knew life would never be the same.
I didn’t grow up knowing about all the professions I could pursue. I originally entered college planning to become a teacher, and when I realized that wasn’t the right path for me, I felt completely lost. You can only imagine the weight of my confusion, being the eldest Mexican daughter. I am a first-generation high school and college graduate. My parents had worked and sacrificed to help me reach opportunities they themselves had never had, so changing direction felt much bigger than simply changing a major.
I was fortunate to have teachers, church mentors, friends, and eventually a college counselor who helped me figure out what came next. That counselor introduced me to psychology and the counseling profession after completing a personality assessment with me. I remember telling her about something I had done since I was around 8 years old. As I looked at people around me, I would wonder what they were thinking, what their lives were like, and what they might be carrying. At the age of 13 I had this saying, “Every mind is a world of its own.” I didn’t know it then, but that curiosity about people—the desire to understand rather than assume—would eventually become part of my life’s work.
I went on to earn my bachelor’s degree in psychology from Texas State and later my master’s degree in Community Counseling from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Graduate school was its own season of transformation. During those three years, I got married, and became a mother to my two boys. I was 36 weeks pregnant when I walked across the stage to receive my master’s degree.
My career then took me through places I could never have predicted. I taught as an adjunct professor at Palo Alto College and initially imagined myself working in college counseling. I later worked with adolescents, younger children, and eventually in infant mental health, supporting children between 18 to 36 months of age with emotional regulation and behavioral concerns.
It was through that work that something became increasingly clear to me: I could support a child, but I could not separate that child from the wellbeing of the people caring for them. Parents’ mental health mattered tremendously.
That realization began shaping the direction of my career. In 2017, I opened my first private practice, Pillars of Life Counseling, and began pursuing specialized training in pregnancy and postpartum mental health. I later became certified in perinatal mental health in 2020 through Postpartum Support International.
My professional interest in this work also became deeply personal. I experienced postpartum depression and anxiety after both of my children, but I did not seek help until years after those symptoms had begun. My struggles extended beyond the traditional postpartum period and into my children’s toddler and early childhood years. Looking back, I can say that my second child experienced a different version of my motherhood than my first son did because healing had begun to change me.
Those experiences are stories I carry with me. I don’t expect anyone else’s recovery to look like mine, but I deeply hope that healing and recovery can become part of their stories too; not only for themselves, but for the children and families who experience life alongside them.
My first private practice closed in 2021 after a year of significant loss within our family and the toll that grief took on my own mental health. I stepped away from business ownership and began working for another organization. At the time, it felt like a difficult change in direction. Looking back, I see that season as God’s grace toward me. It gave me room to grieve, strengthen my clinical work, learn more about business, and rediscover what I wanted the next chapter of my career to become.
That next chapter became Willow Path Collective.
I launched Willow Path Collective in 2025 with the vision of eventually building more than a solo practice. I wanted to create something rooted in specialized support for mothers, fathers, and families navigating pregnancy, postpartum, and the mental health challenges that can accompany these major transitions. Although the practice serves clients virtually across Texas, building it has also brought me back into a deeper connection with my San Antonio community and with the other small-business owners and people who make this city what it is.
Business ownership can be rewarding, but it can also be lonely and challenging. Community has become increasingly important to me through this process. I value supporting other local businesses, learning from the people behind them, and remembering that none of us truly build something alone.
Today, what continues to ground my work is the belief that mothers and fathers matter as individual people, while also recognizing the profound role their wellbeing can have within a family. I know personally that had I remained where I once was, without healing or recovery, I would have continued to suffer, but that suffering would not have affected only me. My children and my family would have experienced it too.
That is one of the reasons I continue doing this work. When a parent begins to recover, find steadiness, and experience themselves differently, the impact can reach beyond that one person. Their children can experience something different too.
Willow Path Collective is still growing, and the vision behind it continues to grow with it. I don’t know exactly what every part of that future will look like yet, but I am grateful for the road that brought me here and excited to see what it becomes.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It would be easy to assume that after more than 13 years working in the mental health field, I would step into business ownership with a great deal of confidence. That has been far from the truth.
Business ownership has humbled me. It has required me to confront parts of myself that I didn’t necessarily expect to meet here, and I have had to find my footing many times along the way. I returned to therapy, and I have worked with an incredible business coach, Christine Brinkman, who has helped me navigate both the practical and personal sides of building a business.
One of the harder things for me to admit has been facing what my faith describes as “fear of man”—becoming too concerned with what others think of me, whether they approve of what I am doing, or whether I am doing it well enough. Especially after pivoting into Christian therapy services, in a time where the word Christian sounds questionable. Yet, this was precisely what I was called to do. Pivoting sounds easy, but it felt like hiking a steep mountain. I have also wrestled with comparison. That one surprised me because I had already done so much work around confidence in motherhood and other areas of my life. Then business ownership gave comparison an entirely new place to show up.
One thing you will get from me is honesty, and the truth is that entrepreneurship has required almost as much internal work as external work. We can find trainings on marketing, finances, systems, branding, and nearly every other part of building a business, but there isn’t nearly as much conversation about the person who is building it. What happens when doubt shows up? When you question whether you’re capable? When someone else appears to be growing faster than you? When you have to decide what actually matters to you instead of simply following what everyone else is doing?
For me, it has become an ongoing process of self-discovery and learning to stay grounded in what I value most.
Community has been instrumental in that process. My business coach, fellow business owners, my husband, and even my children have reminded me why I started during moments filled with doubt, fear, and uncertainty. I am learning that confidence in business does not necessarily mean those feelings disappear. Sometimes it means continuing to build while remaining grounded enough not to let them determine the direction I take.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Willow Path Collective?
Willow Path Collective exists because I have witnessed what can happen when parents improve their mental health and do the hard work of showing up for themselves and their children.
I specialize in supporting the recovery of anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts, relationship challenges, rage/anger, among the many adjustments through pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood. One thing that is important to me is that I do not believe motherhood itself is a problem to fix. Motherhood can bring challenges from many directions—biological, psychological, relational, cultural, societal, spiritual, and even within our own sense of identity. When a mother is born, there can be parts of her that change, parts that are shed, and new parts that are still being discovered.
Pregnancy, postpartum, and becoming a parent involve enormous biological, psychological, relational, developmental, and identity changes. Sometimes mental health challenges emerge within those transitions. My work in the therapy room is to help clients better understand what is happening, address what needs treatment, and develop greater confidence and steadiness rather than simply being told that they “shouldn’t” feel the way they do. I believe that when someone does this work for themselves, it can create a ripple effect throughout their relationships, their parenting, and their family.
I value the parent as an individual person and the parent’s wellbeing as a foundation of support for their children. I witnessed the benefit of steadier parental mental health and the way it can influence the larger family system. Both layers are truly vital.
I established Willow Path Collective after already owning a practice, closing it, walking through significant grief and loss, stepping away from business ownership, continuing to develop clinically, and then deliberately choosing to build again. One of the things I am most proud of is that Willow Path is being built much more intentionally than my first practice was.
That intentionality shows up in the entire client experience. Potential clients have an opportunity to connect with me before beginning care. I want communication, scheduling, and access to services to feel manageable. Once we begin therapy, the work is collaborative but purposeful. We identify what the client wants to change, continue evaluating progress, and adjust the work when needed. I try to remain attuned to what each client is ready for while also being willing to challenge them when I believe growth requires something more. Everyone has a different rhythm toward change, and part of my role is learning when to encourage, when to challenge, and when someone simply needs more time.
I am also intentionally building a practice that supports my own wellbeing. I learned through my first experience in business ownership that I do not want to create a successful practice at the expense of myself or my family. I want to make thoughtful business decisions, establish healthy boundaries, be present with my own family, and build something that I can sustainably continue to serve through. That has become part of what success means to me.
The name Willow Path Collective reflects much of what I hope the practice represents. The willow reminds me that strength does not always mean remaining rigid. Strength can also look like bending, adapting, enduring, recovering, and continuing to grow. The “path” represents my belief that healing and recovery are rarely instantaneous or identical from one person to another. Each person has their own path, and my role is to understand that path well enough to support, encourage, and sometimes challenge them toward greater clarity and growth.
And “Collective” represents the vision ahead. Willow Path currently reflects my work, but I have always imagined it becoming something larger, a place where additional providers, resources, partnerships, and community connections can support parents and families throughout San Antonio and across Texas.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
Something that may surprise people who know me primarily through my work as a therapist is that I also make pottery.
I took my first pottery class in 2021 during a season of grief and significant change in my life, especially in my faith. What began as something creative to try, became much more meaningful to me. Working with clay gave me a place to slow down, use my hands, create without needing everything to be perfect, and reconnect with parts of myself and my faith that needed attention during that season.
Over the years, pottery has grown into another small business, El Roi Ceramics, where I create handmade pieces and occasionally teach workshops. I love that counseling and ceramics use such different parts of me, while both have taught me something about patience, growth, and what can happen when we allow ourselves to be in the process.
I have even begun dreaming about how creativity, community, faith, and some of the work I care about around motherhood might intersect someday—while still keeping my clinical practice and ceramics work appropriately separate. I don’t know exactly what that will look like yet, but it is one of the parts of my future that I am excited to explore. In the meantime, you can find me out in the community offering occasional pottery workshops where people can create, practice letting go of perfection, or simply have a little fun and step away from the routines of everyday life.
Pricing:
- I take health insurance: Aetna, United Healthcare, BCBS, Cigna, Curative and Lyra EAP
- Private Pay: $175
- Sliding Scale Available
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.willowpathcollective.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowpathcollective/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61577355071680
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esmeraldacardenaswpc/
- Other: https://dot.cards/willowpathcollective?utm_source=qr&e=ZGV2aWNlLWYxR3hrNFE4eEliLWYyLWJn
