About Melina Mora | Fairfax & Alexandria Therapy
As the eldest daughter of a Latino immigrant household, I know how faith, family, and culture shape intimacy and the body. My clients often tell me they feel seen in ways they haven’t before.
Therapy is a space to reconnect with your body, your relationships, and yourself.
My story, my roots, my approach.
Like many of you, I carry a layered story — one shaped by love, rupture, healing, and transformation. I’m the eldest daughter of a Salvadoran and Bolivian family, raised by young parents and a village of siblings, tías, tíos, cousins, and grandparents in Northern Virginia. That experience taught me early on about connection, caregiving, complexity, and the spaces in between.
These roots — cultural, personal, ancestral — deeply inform how I show up as a therapist. I understand the weight of expectations, the longing for liberation, and the sacredness of tenderness. And I’ve learned that pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, is not optional — it’s power. I spent years unraveling shame around my own desires and learning to live loudly, laugh fully, and trust my body’s wisdom. It’s a practice I return to daily — and one I’m honored to help others reclaim in themselves.
Even before I became a therapist, I was that friend in high school (you know the one) — the one people came to for sex advice, messy heart things, and permission to be real. That hasn’t changed. I’ve just deepened my tools, sharpened my frameworks, and committed to holding space with greater care, clarity, and accountability.
I also recognize the complexity of practicing within a profession shaped by colonial, medicalized, and often extractive models. While I’ve been trained in those systems, I’m equally committed to unlearning their harms, honoring ancestral knowledge, and staying in active relationship with liberation, feedback, and growth — in myself and in my work.
My approach is collaborative and grounded in curiosity, always centering the values that shape my practice: Curiosity, Pleasure, and Connection. Whether you come to therapy with a loud inner critic, a buried rage, or a desire to feel more like yourself again — you are welcome here.
My Mission
At Dame Más Therapy, my mission is to create a therapeutic space where people reconnect with their own wisdom — not by fixing what’s broken, but by gently uncovering what’s still alive beneath survival.
Guided by the values of Curiosity, Pleasure, and Connection, I support clients in exploring the systems, identities, and experiences that have shaped them. Whether we’re working one-on-one or within a relationship — romantic, familial, or platonic — we create room for new stories to emerge, rooted in agency, embodiment, and care.
This work includes the parts often left out: the rage, the grief, the resentment, the parts that once kept you safe but now feel heavy. Here, we don’t shame what shows up. We make space for it — and let it speak.
This isn’t just about individual healing. It’s about reclaiming what was buried, and letting that reclamation ripple outward — into relationships, communities, and the future we’re all still shaping.
Ready to start therapy?
Ready to start therapy?
I offer therapy for individuals and couples in Alexandria and virtually across Virginia. Whether you’re navigating intimacy, faith, or family dynamics, this can be a space for healing and reconnection. All clients begin with a complimentary 20 minute consultaiton call.