ABOUT MARYL MILLARD

Maryl Millard (pronounced mare-ul muhl-ard) grew up in California’s San Joaquin Valley. She holds Bachelors, Masters, and Ph.D. degrees in Clinical Psychology. Her early decades of professional experience involved work with a wide variety of populations, including full-time work in locked mental facilities, group therapy and counseling with addicts and alcoholics, counseling and in-prison participation with young male felons attending the Squires Program at San Quentin Prison, training and supervising foster care social workers, counseling foster children and foster parents, and adults whose children were removed due to abuse or neglect.

Maryl’s focus on adoption and infertility research, counseling and education arose during her master’s program in Clinical Psychology and remained a priority. In 1984 she settled in the San Francisco Bay Area and continued her career as a psychotherapist, educator, researcher and national adoption and infertility consultant. Maryl is the birthmother of two daughters (Kathleen, 55, and Amy, 43) who were adopted at birth and raised by their adoptive parents in closed adoptions but have contact with her as adults.

Her two youngest daughters (Kate, 25 and Lara, 31) were adopted by Maryl and her husband as babies through open adoptions. Their daughter Kate lives in Fresno. Maryl and her husband Larry live on 12 acres of rolling pasture in the Sierra Foothills. Their daughter Lara, her husband Gary, and three children now ages 10, 12, and 13, live nearby on the same property. The children’s first father, David, lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Maryl’s knowledge of mainstream clinical psychology informs her work with clients and students, but her current work is more accurately placed in the field of transpersonal psychology. Scientific evidence abounds to support the value of hypnosis, deep meditation and expanded states of consciousness in healing and development. Less invasive and damaging than surgery and medications, these proven methods deserve to be a viable option alongside traditional medical practices.