SILER CITY — Ashleigh Glover could have gone to Chapel Hill or Cary or Apex to start her career as a mental health counselor. Quite frankly, it would have been a lot easier. But that didn’t sit right with her.
“I didn’t want to outsource,” she said.
Instead, Glover decide to blaze a new trail in Chatham County, an area that’s been a definitive part of her life from her time at Silk Hope School, Jordan-Matthews High and Central Carolina Community College. Chatham is home. Its people are her people — or, as she more often calls them, her folks.
And, just as much as anyone living in the Triangle or another major metro area, the folks of Chatham County, from Bennett to Bear Creek to Bynum, deserve high-quality and accessible mental health care.
“Therapy is for everybody,” Glover said. “Everybody goes through life changes. Everybody goes through adjustments. Everybody has stress. Everybody has anxiety at some point. So why not provide services here and allow those people to feel better?”
That, for her, was a logical reason to spend the last year and change building her own clinic from the ground up. The end result, Chatham Counseling & Wellness — located at 123 E. Raleigh Street in Siler City, directly across from the post office — will officially open for business on Monday, Nov. 2.
“It’s so rewarding it's finally here,” she said.
“It’s been a year of planning,” her husband, Stacy, added. “One week, there’s a challenge that might pop up, and we get through it. And then we turn around, and the same time that next week, there’s another challenge. You have to figure it out.”
Glover, 30, took a roundabout path into her current field, where she’s already proved a rising star with multiple honors from the North Carolina Counseling Association. And her underlying motivation in every career she’s tried — to serve others, always — came from a childhood she described as “less than easy.”
When Ashleigh was 3, her mother, an alcoholic, left home. She was mostly raised by her father in Silk Hope as her mother floated in and out of jail. When she was 5, her father was arrested on drug charges, and she had her first experience with child protective services, ultimately living with her grandparents.
When she was 12, her mother died. When she was 13, her stepmother was abusing her and CPS got involved but “ended up missing it,” she said. All of it, Glover said, had a root: her biological mother, who lost eight family members in a short timeframe as a child, including five siblings in a 1987 house fire.
“She never had mental health treatment,” Glover said, “and I think that’s where it originally started.”
Today, she can diagnose her teenage self with secondary trauma — an after-effect common among the family members or loved ones of someone who’s experienced something traumatic firsthand. Back then, though, she wasn’t aware of it. She picked up bad habits and hung up with the wrong crowd.
But Silk Hope School’s prom, of all things, proved a turning point. That was when Stacy, an 8th-grader, asked Ashleigh, a 7th-grader, to go to the dance with him. They’ve been together even since.
“And no breakups,” Stacy said, smiling.
“Yep,” Ashleigh said. ‘We’ve been straight through."
They were a grade apart in school, but ultimately ended up graduating at the same time in 2007 — Stacy from Jordan-Matthews, and Ashleigh with her GED from CCCC. (She’d dropped out J-M as a 16-year-old junior after falling behind on schoolwork when a rib injury kept her out of the classroom for weeks.)
Next came Campbell University, where they both earned bachelor’s degrees. Married in 2010, the Glovers had their first child in 2012 (they now have two daughters and a son) and balanced family duties with work duties to the extreme, as Stacy worked in tech support and Ashleigh in CPS and social work across Harnett, Johnston and Lee counties.
“I put my all into it,” she said. “I was so passionate about it.”
Eventually, though, she got burnt out in a field she was determined to improve based on her own CPS experience. Glover worked primarily with the parents of children in CPS, setting up case plans with them to get back on track: taking parenting classes, maintaining a permanent residence, holding a job.
But in her five years of CPS and social work, she only reunited one family.
“I had to terminate parents’ rights,” she said. “I had take kids back out. A lot of people were failing my drug tests. It got really disheartening.”
It was at that point, in 2018, that she realized her true calling: mental health counseling. As a cognitive behavioral therapist, she could tackle root issues and help people tangibly break unhealthy cycles. So she went to work on a master’s degree at Campbell.
Hours of classes, commuting and certifications later, she had the credentials to seek out a job as a mental health professional. Finding Chatham Counseling & Wellness’ ultimate location was pretty serendipitous; Glover stumbled upon the open spot while strolling downtown Siler City last August, took a photo of the contact information on the door and signed a lease that same afternoon.
“Everything came together so perfectly,” she said.
This week, the Glovers will be putting finishing touches on the space, which is intentionally designed to soothe customers with velvety couches and chairs in two private therapy rooms, dark mahogany desks and drawers up front and wall art placed throughout, courtesy of the Jordan-Matthews Arts program.
Stacy, 31, will manage day to day operations and billing as the office coordinator. Ashleigh will provide the counseling — for individuals, for couples, for families — as the owner and lead therapist.
And come Nov. 2, when Chatham Counseling & Wellness opens, their dream for the last year will become official — and, they hope, help a lot of folks in the process.
“People can expect a place to come and work through all of their issues and problems,” Ashleigh said. “We’re not judgmental. Come as you are. We’re here to support you. We’re here to help you heal."
Reporter Chapel Fowler can be reached at cfowler@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @chapelfowler.