Kimberly Stokka Merendino

Therapist Author & Nonprofit Founder

Kimberly Stokka Merendino, PhD, LMFT, RPT-S, is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor, author, speaker, clinical supervisor, and nonprofit founder. For more than two decades, she has walked alongside children, adults, couples, and families navigating grief, trauma, caregiving, relationship challenges, and some of life’s most difficult transitions.
 
Her professional understanding of suffering became deeply personal when her husband was diagnosed with stage IV lymphoma, transforming Kimberly from therapist to caregiver and, in many ways, student of the very questions she had spent her career helping others navigate. The experience deepened her belief that healing is not about avoiding pain, but learning how to remain fully alive in its presence. Her journey eventually led her to become a death doula and to found PaRC Place, a nonprofit creating a pediatric respite, palliative, and end-of-life care home where children with life-limiting conditions and their families can experience compassionate, family-centered care.
 
Kimberly’s writing brings together clinical insight, lived experience, and a deeply reflective approach to the human experience. She explores the difference between the pain life inevitably brings and the unnecessary suffering we create through perfectionism, relentless striving, self-criticism, fear, and the illusion of control.
 
At the heart of all her work is a simple invitation: to lay down what no longer serves us and return to a life marked by presence, connection, wonder, joy, and hope.