Family Medicine Clinician Spotlight: Shari Brightly-Brown, PhD, LP

Shari Brightly-Brown, PhD, LP, is an assistant professor, clinician, educator, and researcher with a focus on the intersections between gender and sexual health. They are particularly interested in sex therapy focusing on sexual pleasure for trans and gender non-conforming people, and resilience among racially marginalized LGBTQ+ people. They teach courses related to gender health and human sexuality and try to focus on an intersectionality and liberation lens.

What brings you joy in practicing your specialty and why?

The clients I work with but also the other clinicians that I consult with. Also, just the ways that being a psychotherapist allows me to have really intimate connections with people.

Why did you choose family medicine?

I chose sexual and gender therapy, which happens to live at the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. When I was a teenager I wanted to be a relationship therapist – I think marriage therapist was the name of the specialty at the time.

In college I got really interested in sexuality, and then gender came up as an important piece of that. And being a queer person myself, the trans community is a really important community for queer liberation in general. But particularly as it relates to sexual health, we're also such an underserved group and so everything just aligned for those to be the intersecting focuses. Luckily the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health exists as a place where both can be done separately and integratedly. There aren’t a lot of places where that happens.

What advice would you give to yourself as a clinician just starting out?

Focus on what you know and what you can do, because that's how you will have the most impact. For the rest, genuine curiosity, empathy, and kindness go a long way.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

Minneapolis has an amazing organizing scene that I have been able to get involved with, and which feels really integrated with the work that I do. A favorite activity is going for a walk with a friend by the lake, probably talking about queer relationships and organizing.

What are your key messages when teaching clinical care?

Key messages include decolonization, liberation and intersectionality. I feel like in my own clinical education, those were very minimal. I was usually having to find that out myself. Particularly as a person who holds the identities that I do but also for the specific work of sexual and gender health, which is the main clinical work I am doing these days. 

Because if I were to take my education unfiltered and unchecked, I would be doing harm. So it’s about really making sure people are understanding that and having that critical lens. It’s about understanding that if they don't like the systems that we're educated in – to avoid potential harm to the people that we are trying to serve – we need to have a liberation-focused and intersectional lens to mitigate harm because we can't completely erase it.

What are you particularly proud of as you consider your clinical career so far?

As a baby clinician, that's a hard question. I'm proud of the people I work with. Being where I am now, I've critically changed so much of how I was educated because of the supervisors and colleagues who I work with, who helped me understand what it is to bring those lenses of decolonizing and liberation focus to my work. Being relational and really showing up in ways that can actually be healing for the people that I work with within our institutions that are inherently oppressive. I'm really proud of the ways that the people I work with have been able to hold that space for me and help me hold that space for the clients we work with.

What do you hope to achieve in the years to come? 

I want to pass that forward – to be able to hold a space that is healing for people who were like me, coming into the field and looking for a way to be a psychotherapist and ways to exist in these institutions. I plan to work with marginalized people, particularly trans people, and find a way to let us access our sexual liberation and pleasure. I would love to continue growing and learning in a way that will allow me to pass that on for years to come, offering it to other people looking to access that.