In April 2014 Barb Majors and her family stumbled upon a building for sale in downtown Milwaukie, Oregon. The previous owner had moved on, essentially abandoning it. Barb had a vision for what we see today as Hope House.
Barb’s vision took the abandoned space from a lost space to a place of hope. Built in 1888 and originally owned by the Rev. Hager and his wife. It is the oldest residential building in the city of Milwaukie and on the historic register for that fact. A lot of elbow grease, time, and love went into restoring the building.
Trellis Counseling, in a very different form, began in the fall of 2014 with a handful of clients. The focus was on family therapy and Barb Majors was the only clinician. Through a set of unexpected turn of events, Barb made a decision to close “for now” and turned to working in, first, a hospital setting with individuals with severe and persistent mental illnesses and then in a community mental health clinic with that same population. It was during this time that Barb discovered that her calling was working with individuals who have experienced trauma. In January 2018 she left her job in the community mental health setting and reopened Trellis Counseling with a focus on trauma.
It quickly became apparent that one therapist could not keep up with the demand of requests for help and Barb decided that it was time to bring on some clinicians to join her in the quest to help as many trauma survivors as possible. Today we continue to find the demand great for trauma recovery help.
Hope House was designed so that people could come into the building and feel immediately that something was different and that hope could be possible for them. A place that didn’t feel like a clinic, but felt more like a welcoming home.
