Laura Stone: Helping People Find Their Way Forward

When Laura Stone talks about her work, she returns again and again to one core belief: people need to feel that they belong.

As interim director of River Valley Counseling Center’s substance use program, Stone helps make that possible for clients and clinicians alike. She supervises a case manager and a recovery coach who support people in the community, oversees clinicians in outpatient care, helps manage referrals and data collection, supports college programs, Girls Inc., and Bureau of Substance Addiction Services-funded programs in public schools and works with clients herself. But for all the administrative complexity, Stone says, the heart of the job is listening, teaching, and helping people grow.

That mix of care and guidance is part of what drew her to the field. Stone came to Western Mass from Central New York for graduate school at Springfield College, where she studied athletic counseling before expanding into mental health counseling. What began as an interest in performance, focus, and the connection between mind and body — rooted in her own experience in high school field hockey and track — grew into something larger.

“I fell in love with the mental health piece,” she said.

That path also felt familiar. Service work runs in the family. Stone’s mother was a special education teacher for more than three decades, and her father recently retired as a hospice nurse. From them, she said, she absorbed both a nurturing spirit and a respect for learning that continues to shape how she leads.

“My father always said, ‘You can never waste an education,’” Stone said. “No matter if it’s a lesson from the street or in the classroom.”

Those words, she said, inspire her work every day. As a supervisor, Stone supports clinicians not only with documentation, ethics, and clinical questions, but also with the emotional weight of the job. Outpatient work can be isolating and exhausting, she said, and part of her role is helping people stay grounded, avoid burnout, and remember the good they are doing.

So, when she meets with staff, she asks them to bring not only the difficult cases, but also the ones that make them smile.

“Part of my job,” she said, “is to provide the support for them to find their own voices. That’s how people learn and grow.”

That approach is especially important in substance use work, where setbacks are often part of the journey for both clients and counselors. Stone believes strongly that failure should never be seen as the end of the story.

“One of the many lessons in my education and life experience,” she wrote, “is that failure is an option, but quitting is not. I actually want people to be comfortable with failure. If it means a counselor failed their licensure test, or a particular therapeutic approach didn’t work for their client, that just means they’re going to be stronger from that experience.”

In the substance use program, resilience is built in, in the form of a team approach. Clients may work with an outpatient therapist, a recovery coach, and a case manager, depending on their needs. Together, the team helps people build support systems, connect with community resources like AA or intensive outpatient programs, address practical barriers such as housing, and keep moving toward recovery.

Success, Stone says, doesn’t look the same for everyone.

“For some,” she said, “It’s ‘I don’t want to cry anymore.’ Or ‘I want to be happy again.’ Or sometimes it is a tangible thing, like, ‘I want to get a job.’ Or housing. Some of it is tangible and measurable, but some of it is mood related.”

Whatever the goal, she wants clients to know they don’t have to carry everything alone.

“There’s so much stigma around mental health,” she said. “When we come to therapy, we want to feel support, love, and belonging. I always tell people: give it five sessions. It’s hard at first, but you don’t have to do it alone.”

To learn more about River Valley Counseling’s Substance Use Programs, call 413-540-1234 or visit https://www.rvccinc.org/services-specialities/SubstanceUsePrograms/.