Shadeen Francis is a licensed marriage and family psychotherapist and a board-certified sex therapist. Her unique expertise spans the domains of mental health, emotional intelligence, and the intersection of sexual wellness and social justice.
Shadeen believes in leveraging community strengths to make therapeutic transformation accessible beyond clinical settings. She collaborates with diverse institutions—non-profits, medical facilities, tech companies, homeless shelters, and school boards—to meet people where they are. As such, her insights have been used to develop nationally-implemented curricula, global media strategy, and public health policy. Shadeen is also an avid writer, having authored several textbook chapters on topics ranging from sexual fluidity to leadership in education.
Shadeen has been featured on platforms such as ABC, NBC, and CBS, and has been the subject matter expert for brands including Playboy, Bumble, Tinder, and Teen Vogue. Notable among her projects are the 'Dear Shadeen' web series hosted by actress Jameela Jamil, her collaboration with NBA All-Star Blake Griffin on the 'Pursuit of Healthiness' Podcast, and her engaging live sessions on the emotional wellness app, Felt (acquired).
What these experiences have in common is her passion for transforming difficult subjects into opportunities for deeper connection. Known for her signature brand of warmth and humour, all of Shadeen’s work is inspired by her commitment to helping people live lives full of peace and pleasure.
AN OPEN LETTER
As a kid, my only professional goal was to join the X Men.
Seriously.
Other kids wanted to grow up and be princesses and pop stars. I wanted to grow up and live freely and fully as a mutant.
I saw there was a lot of pain in the world, and I wanted a way to make a difference. I spent elementary school reading about telekinesis and attempting risky stunts to encourage my powers to manifest. As I got older and my powers didn't materialize in the ways that I had hoped, I realized that I needed to find another way to help bring ease to people’s suffering. Becoming a licensed psychotherapist was the closest alternative I had to becoming a superhero.
I wanted people to know that they aren't alone. I wanted to help them feel better.
Over the last 11 years, I’ve come to recognize that the pain I saw in the world as a child wasn’t just “out there”, it was also inside of me. I felt things, things that happened to me, but also the things that were happening to others around me. We are wired for connection, drawn to community and interdependence the same way that flowers tilt toward the sun. The best and most challenging parts of our lives are feelings. As we shift our relationship to how we feel, we also shift the trajectory of our entire lives. But most of us weren’t taught that feelings were okay. For some of us, feelings were bad, messy, shameful, wrong, or just not important.
In the early days, my work was about creating the systems support that I had needed. This meant a lot of community work outside of the office, and a lot of ongoing study. These felt like necessary parts of my commitment to well-being, instead of only supporting folks who could afford traditional therapy and could get onto my clinical schedule. I started to write, teach, and facilitate workshops on what I was learning through research, the clinical office, and in my life. This took me on adventures around the world to participate in events that helped people feel seen and understood. In all this, my biggest lesson was that empathy is powerful. Maybe even a superpower.
(This was confirmed by Marvel, which was a transformative moment of affirmation for me.)
My focus for much of this time has been on sex and relationships because…well, why not? They are everywhere: in our music, our textbooks, in advertisements, our daydreams, our politics. They are sources of joy and anguish, grief and celebration, trauma and growth. Inevitably my work has expanded into considerations of justice and equity - it felt superficial to try and help people reach their goals without considering the context of the world we live in. Sex and justice seem to be two sides of a very coveted coin. But all of this truly is about feeling. How we feel is how we connect. And our best science says that connection is why we exist.
I believe that our greatest strengths come from our vulnerability. Our profound capacity for resilienceis not just about surviving the hardness of the world, but nurturing our tender cores, and turning to one another.
I leave this note as an open permission slip for you to feel your feelings. I hope you will treat yourself with kindness and compassion on your journey inwards, and that you will remember that we have an unwavering ability to heal, and we don’t have to do it alone.
Wishing you peace and pleasure,