Joan Shapiro

Joan was born in Bowling Green KY. She grew up in Nashville TN. She graduated from Indiana University with a BA in Comparative Literature, and from Washington University in St. Louis with an MSW in Clinical Social Work. In St. Louis, she worked in book design, systems documentation, mental health consumer advocacy, healthcare reform, and community organizing. She studied several foreign languages and took drawing and painting classes at Saint Louis University and Washington University. She had a psychotherapy practice for ten years, however, rather than psychotherapy, she styled her profession as “Macrotherapy,” which is the analysis, diagnosis, and treatment of large systems that may benefit from intervention and reform. Philosophically, she finds that mental illness in an individual or family can most often be attributed to experiencing powerlessness in an unfair system in which one is unlikely to succeed within, or overcome. Informed by her own “mental illness” in her young and middle adulthood, she feels confident in her ability to help others.

Nearly drowning in humidity, Joan moved to the Colorado mountains to paint landscapes and study figure drawing in 1997. She studied music theory and music production with Professor Dennis Woodrich and has worked as a songwriter and executive producer of music since 2014, culminating in her most recent projects. Joan published a book in 2023 entitled Stolen Seasons: Observations, Poems, Lyrics and Rants. The lyrics in that book inspired the album Stolen Seasons: The Musical, vol. 1, which was produced collaboratively with the dynamic Taylor Riley, owner/engineer of Fusion Audio Systems, and the equally dynamic Cyborgs: composers and performers Aaron and Jessica Seibert. Vol. 1 is now being performed in concert and is available on Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music and many other music platforms, with Vol.  2 currently in progress.

At 75, Joan finds life exciting and positive (other than the politics of the current moment) and is seeing that if one lives long enough and is extraordinarily fortunate, everything one has learned or experienced might begin to coalesce and make sense, and might even result in a new career. 

Joan lives in the San Juan Mountains with her two dogs, Cupcake (a Norwich Terrier) and Lollipup (a mini-Dachshund).