Sara Rettig, LSW, LCADC, Profiled By Influential Women, Built Connect & Reflect To Help Women Find Themselves Again

NORTH HALEDON, NJ, UNITED STATES, October 1, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Through Connect & Reflect Therapy LLC, Sara works with women navigating anxiety, motherhood, postpartum changes, divorce, trauma, and major life transitions.

A lot of the women Sara Rettig works with are used to being the person everyone depends on. They are taking care of the kids, managing the house, working, keeping up with relationships, remembering everyone’s schedules, and trying to keep everything moving. From the outside, they may look like they are doing fine. Internally, they may feel anxious, overwhelmed, disconnected from themselves, or unsure of who they are anymore.

That is a big part of what led Sara to create Connect & Reflect Therapy LLC, her New Jersey-based psychotherapy practice. Sara works with women who are trying to understand why they feel the way they do, where certain patterns came from, and what they want to do differently moving forward.

“A lot of women come to me knowing something feels off, but they can’t always explain why. They’ve spent so much time being the mom, the partner, the employee, the person everyone depends on that they’ve lost touch with the person underneath all of it,” Sara says. “I want therapy to be the place where they can reconnect with that part of themselves and figure out what they want, what they need, and what they’re no longer willing to give up.”

Understanding the Why Behind the Pattern
A big part of Sara’s work is helping women stop judging themselves for the ways they cope. The overthinking. The people-pleasing. The guilt. The difficulty setting boundaries. The need to keep everyone happy. The constant second-guessing.

Sara believes those patterns usually make more sense when you understand where they came from. Maybe staying quiet helped keep the peace. Maybe being independent became necessary. Maybe constantly thinking ahead helped someone feel more prepared or in control.

The goal is not to shame those patterns. It is to understand why they developed and then ask whether they are still helping.

“I always want people to move away from ‘what is wrong with me?’ and get more curious about why they learned to operate this way in the first place,” Sara says. “Once you understand that, you can start deciding what still fits and what doesn’t.”

Motherhood and Identity
Motherhood has become an especially meaningful part of Sara’s work. She often works with women who love their children deeply but still feel like they lost a piece of themselves along the way.

They may feel guilty for wanting time alone, miss who they were before becoming a mother, or feel anxious, overwhelmed, touched out, and unsure of how to balance motherhood with still being their own person.

“You can love being a mom and still miss yourself,” Sara says. “Those two things can exist at the same time.”

For many women, therapy becomes a place to figure out who they are now. Not who they were before motherhood, the relationship, the divorce, or whatever life change brought them here, but who they are in this stage of their life.

Therapy That Feels Like a Real Conversation
Sara’s style is person-centered, trauma-informed, and conversational. She uses approaches including cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, motivational interviewing, mindfulness, and EMDR-informed techniques, but she does not want therapy to feel stiff or overly clinical.

She wants people to feel like they are talking to a real person- someone who listens, notices patterns, asks questions, and is willing to challenge them when needed.

“I don’t want someone to leave the session feeling like they just talked for an hour and nothing happened,” Sara says. “I want them to leave understanding something about themselves that they maybe didn’t see before.”

Sometimes that means talking about boundaries or looking at a belief someone has carried for years. Sometimes it means helping a woman recognize that feeling guilty does not always mean she is doing something wrong. And sometimes it means simply having one place where she does not have to take care of anyone else.

Her Own Experiences Shaped Her Work
Sara’s connection to this work is personal as well as professional. Her own life has included loss, motherhood, relationship changes, divorce, career transitions, and starting over. Those experiences shaped the way she thinks about healing and change.

She does not believe people have to turn every hard experience into something positive. Sometimes something is just painful. Sometimes it changes you. The work is recognizing how the past shaped you while still permitting yourself to choose what comes next.

Sara earned her Master of Social Work in Advanced Clinical Studies from Walden University. She is a Licensed Social Worker and Licensed Clinical Alcohol and Drug Counselor and is in the process of completing training in EMDR.

Before opening Connect & Reflect Therapy LLC, she worked in co-occurring mental health and substance use treatment, where she spent years working with people navigating complex mental health concerns, trauma, addiction, and major life changes.

That experience reinforced something that now shapes her entire approach: before judging a pattern, understand what created it.

Helping Women Trust Themselves More
Another theme that comes up often in Sara’s work is self-trust.

A lot of women already know when something is not working. They may know they are burned out, overextending themselves, saying yes when they want to say no, or staying in a relationship or situation that no longer feels right.

The harder part is trusting themselves enough to do something about it.

Sara sees therapy as a place where women can begin rebuilding that trust. Not because she gives them the answer, but because she helps them slow down enough to hear their own.

“There is usually a part of you that already knows,” Sara says. “Sometimes you just need a place where you can actually listen to it.”

Pick Your Hard
One phrase Sara often comes back to is “pick your hard.”

Trusting yourself can be hard, but constantly second-guessing yourself is hard too. Taking up space can feel uncomfortable, but shrinking yourself to make other people comfortable has a cost. Becoming the woman you want to be can require difficult choices, but staying stuck in a version of yourself you have outgrown can be just as painful.

Sara helps women see that “pick your hard” is not about choosing suffering. It is about choosing the hard that brings them closer to themselves.

For her, that is a big part of empowerment- not becoming someone completely different, but becoming more honest about what you want, what you need, and what you are no longer willing to carry.

A Place Where Women Can Just Show Up
At the heart of Connect & Reflect Therapy, Sara wants women to have a place where they do not have to perform, prove, or pretend.

They do not have to be the strong one. They do not have to have everything figured out. They do not have to minimize what they are going through. They can just show up as they are.

From there, the work is about making sense of what they are feeling, understanding where it came from, and figuring out what they want next.

That is ultimately what Sara hopes women take from therapy: a better understanding of themselves, more trust in their own voice, and the confidence to make choices that feel like their own.

Your story shaped you, but it does not have to decide what happens next.

Learn More about Sara Rettig:

Through her Influential Women profile, https://influentialwomen.com/connect/sara-rettig or through her website, https://connectandreflecttherapy.com/

Influential Women

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