About Kai

Kai Thigpen, LCSW (they/them) is a therapist and poet living and working in Lenapehoking, erroneously known as Philadelphia, PA. Kai is of Ashkenazi Jewish and Irish descent and was raised in France, Sweden, and occupied Turtle Island (also referred to as the United States). Other social locations of theirs include being white, queer, non-binary and trans, and temporarily able-bodied. Kai also has lived experience with having a borderline personality structure; this helps to inform their commitment to providing depathologizing and person-centered care. Since 2018, Kai has provided outpatient therapy in a general community mental health setting, a community mental health setting specifically serving people who have experienced trauma, an LGBT+ and HIV+ focused organization, and a group practice centering care for LGBT+ and neurodivergent people. They began operating this private practice in 2023. Kai's poetry chapbook habitat appeared with Illuminated Press in 2023 and their full-length poetry collection heart of us was published by Another New Calligraphy in 2024. They are a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. Kai has previously served as a board member with the William Way LGBT Community Center, as a volunteer with two crisis counseling hotlines, and places import on engaging in social justice work and community care. Kai gladly ascribes to liberationist, abolitionist, and anti-Zionist values. They learn deeply from movements centered in these principles as well as from disability justice and healing justice movements, decolonial movements, anarchist and leftist thought and practice, mad pride and anti-psychiatry movements, emergent strategy, and their own community. Kai enjoys reading, gardening, and spending time with their fluffiest co-conspirators, pictured below.