Melody 盈希 Li

Collective Liberation & Healing

Mental health Justice Advocate

Inclusive TherapistsMental Health Liberation
Melody Li, founder of Inclusive Therapists and Mental Health Liberation.  early-midlife nonbinary Hong Konger with short black hair, blunt bangs. First photo, wearing a knitted toque, black shirt, and a red & black keffiyeh.

About Melody (/they)

Warm welcome. I’m glad that you’re here!

I’m a queer, nonbinary, neurodivergent therapist of East Asian diaspora. I commit my many privileges (skin color, class background, education, mobility, and more) towards my role as a mental health justice advocate.

I founded Inclusive Therapists: a social justice and liberation-oriented mental health directory, community, and resource hub centering people with multiply-marginalized identities.

Our non-profit ecosystem, Mental Health Liberation, bridges Black, Brown, Indigenous and People of the Global Majority with free, culturally-responsive therapy services, and empowers students and emerging clinicians through peer & mentor support.

My activism focuses on collective liberation and healing, co-creating as we disrupt and dismantle.

I invite you to get to know more about me, the communities I love, and to connect.

My PeoplE

Communities I Foster

illustration of 4 Inclusive Therapists team members gathering and smiling

Inclusive Therapists

Social justice and liberation-oriented mental health directory, community, and resource hub. 

We offer a safer, simpler way to find a therapist, counselor, coach, or mental health provider committed to Racial, 2SLGBTQIA+, Neurodivergence, and Disability Justice.

Meet the Inclusive Therapists and Mental Health Liberation team members (from top to bottom, left to right): Dr. Ebony Butler, CéShaun Hankins, Dr. Lauren Harper, Amanda Huynh, Joyce Kabwe, Bianca Lee, Lanise Lywood, Melody Li, Becca Steckle

Mental Health Liberation

Grassroots, LGBTQ+ BIPOC–led nonprofit rooted in collective liberation and Healing Justice principles. 

Together, we bridge Black, Indigenous and Communities of Color/Global Majority with free therapy and mental health care, and empower racialized students & emerging clinicians.

It was a pleasure to bring Mel to work with our leaders (“Decolonizing Mental Health for Leaders” Keynote). Their commitment to truth and care was uplifting and impactful to our leaders as they navigate such an extraordinary time. Mel helped us create the space for people to remember that they are humans, not human resources. This is something we hold dear as we move through the world.

Tara Ashcraft

Diversity & Inclusion Leader, Trane Technologies

Work with Melody

Ways to Collaborate
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Speaker, Panelist, Educator

Decolonizing Mental Health Care

Mental Health Justice and Liberation

Tending to Racialized Trauma During Crisis

Collective Liberation and Solidarity

LGBTQIA+ Mental Wellness, Deconstructing the Binary

East Asian Diaspora Mental Health, with focus on smashing: white cishet-patriarchy, racialized sexualization, and model minority myth

Reckoning with Colonial-Christian Violence Towards Queer, Trans, and Nonbinary People of the Global Majority

Consultation

I offer consultation to organizations and institutions such as ACLU Oregon and Seminary of the Southwest.

Areas of Speciality 

Beyond Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: Moving Towards Liberatory, Anti-colonial Practice

Mental Health Justice and Liberation

Tending to Racialized Trauma & Honoring Intersectionality in Organizations and Institutions

Community Care for Leaders, Clinicians, and Students of the Global Majority

Cultivating Inclusive, Decolonial, Anti-Oppressive Therapeutic and Relational Practices

Collective Care

Free, culturally responsive mental health care for Black, Brown, Indigenous and People of the Global Majority.

Nurturing and empowering future generations of BI&POC mental health justice advocates.

Melody Li is a wonderful professional to work with! They shared their professionalism, wisdom, authenticity and kindness during their training titled “Tending to Anti-Asian Racialized Trauma Through Decolonial, Collective Healing” for the Texas Institute for Excellence in Mental Health housed at UT Austin.

Not only the participants shared great feedback and were truly excited to be part of the training, but our staff team was so pleased to be part of the planning process. They’re a joy to work with and an incredible educator to learn from/with. Thank you Melody for all you do!

Ari Acosta

Behavioral Health Equity Specialist, University of Texas in Austin

Melody Li's Headshot: middle-age East Asian femme-presenting human with medium tone skin, bob haircut, wearing a black tank top, tattoo on right shoulder, smiling at the viewer.
Mental Health Liberation

LIBERATE

HEAL

THRIVE

As a colony-born migrant and diasporic settler on Turtle Island embodying many structural privileges, I advocate for Landback & Indigenous Sovereignty, Black liberation and reparations, restoration of Land, and liberation of all humans and other-than-humans facing oppression, violence, exploitation, silencing, erasure, and forced displacement.

The change starts with my own unlearning and healing, to develop heightened awareness of ways I perpetuate harm. Next, we disrupt harm, reckon with our complicities, and build collective power to dismantle the mental health industrial complex.

We simultaneously co-create and nurture healing spaces and resource, centering collective care and safety (with Healing Justice as our compass).

I use my position as a therapist, voice as a queer/NB person with light brown skin, and ancestral knowledge to advance mental health justice in our beloved communities.

Please visit: Inclusive Therapists and Mental Health Liberation to learn more.

That was amazing, above and beyond anything I could have imagined. I am so grateful for you and the wonderful work that you do!

I’m still getting people emailing me with such positive feedback. No less than 6 people have told me, “It’s the best training you’ve ever brought to Lines for Life”.

What you taught so well was that trauma lives in the body, and we can’t just talk about it in intellectual terms. We have to be with our bodies and heal ourselves so that we can do the important healing work with others.

Tending to Racialized Trauma & Rupture Workshop

Alexis Hilliard

Lines for Life

Melody partnered with Ryan Dillon and Prism, our LBGTQIA+ Employee Resource Group to create and facilitate an incredibly in-depth, educational, and empathetic webinar, “Uplifting LGBTQIA+ Mental Health,” as part of our company’s Pride celebrations.

Prism members were proud that the webinar truly centered them and took an intersectional approach when this is so often not the case.

Employees outside of the LGBTQIA+ community have shared that this webinar gave them the tools, understanding, and even the bravery to have conversations, make mistakes, and take action toward allyship.

We were so thrilled to work with Melody and so proud to present their teaching to our global workforce.

Margaret-Ellen Christensen

Director, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion and HR Programs, J2 Global

In the Media on Mental Health Liberation and Inclusive Therapists

I am still smiling – what an amazing exploration of gender and identity!!

We cannot thank you enough for your willingness to approach these topics, particularly in a way that was honest and did not diminish the content in order to make it more palatable for the cisheteronormative perspective.

Uplifting LGBTQIA+ Mental Health: Celebrating Gender Expansiveness & Creating Affirming Community Workshop

Madison Swain-Bowden

Data Engineer, Ookla

This webinar was one of the best I have ever seen. Melody was well informed, trauma-focused, and genuine. I felt heard and comfortable the whole time.

On top of that, I learned so much about racial trauma and rupture – I plan to use information from the webinar in my personal and professional life.

Melody honored the experience that Asian communities have endured in this country historically and presently. But more importantly, they contextualized the impacts, the intersections, and the methods of providing comprehensive mental health services to those effected by a wide array of racial traumas.

Their presentation style was fluid. Their macro and micro level analysis of the Asian experience, and their grounding techniques, blew me away.

Tending to Racialized Trauma & Rupture Workshop Participant

Lines for Life