ABOUT
Dr. Perpetue K. Augustin
DSW, LCSW / LCSW-QS (FL)
Licensed in 8 states
"I want to be the person I did not know existed when we were figuring everything out."
HER STORY
She knows what it means to be in between.
She was 16 when she and her family arrived in the United States together. A new country, new systems, everything at once. Her family navigated it the way immigrant families do: with each other, with determination, and without a guide. They pushed her. They believed she could be anything. They still do.
What she did not have at 16 was someone who could see the full shape of what she was carrying. Not just the logistics of being new somewhere, but the in-between. The belonging to two worlds and fully claiming neither. The way you learn to translate not just language but experience, context, and self, constantly, without anyone asking if you are tired.
She has a soft spot for young immigrants navigating that same in-between. Not as a defined part of her work, but as something she shows up for when she can. If someone needs a point of contact, a word of encouragement, or simply someone who gets it, she tends to be that person. She knows what it meant to have that, and what it cost to not.
Her clinical practice is broad. The full weight of her training and her understanding of what it means to carry a story no one quite prepared you to tell shows up in the evaluations she writes, in the consulting work she is building toward, and in the supervision she offers to emerging clinicians.
When she sits with a client navigating the immigration system, that understanding is in the room. She is not simply reading a file. She is someone who knows what it means to have that much riding on a document, to need the person writing it to actually see you.
That sensibility did not come from a textbook. It came from watching, for years, what it looks like when someone decides that care is not something you announce. It is something you put on the table.
She did not always have clinical language for what she was watching. But she was watching. And the first place she ever saw it done clearly was not in a therapy room. It was in her mother's kitchen.
"I did not know what this country held for me. I knew enough to keep going."
Dr. Perpetue K. Augustin
THE TABLE WAS ALWAYS THE POINT
How her mother taught her that feeding someone is an act of care.
Her mother loved to cook. She taught her daughter how, both as a lesson and as a shared love, because cooking mattered to her and she wanted it to matter to her daughter too. It did not always land that way at first. But somewhere along the way, without announcing it, something shifted.
Her mother's kitchen was never just about food. No one entered her home without being fed. No one left it hungry. When someone was visiting, the meal was not backdrop. It was where the visit actually happened, where the laughter and the grief and the hard things all had somewhere to land.
When someone was celebrating, her mother would ask what she needed to bring. In the deeper moments of sorrow, she would not ask at all. She would simply know what that person needed, and she would make it.
She would not begin a conversation without first having something prepared for you. That was how she loved people. Feeding others was her first language.
"My mother never let anyone leave her home without a full plate. I did not understand then that she was teaching me how to heal people."
DR. PERPETUE K. AUGUSTIN
She grew into her mother without realizing it. And somewhere along the way she began to understand that the kitchen was doing something she also recognized from her clinical work. It was creating the conditions for people to finally exhale.
She grew curious about how many other people experience the same thing. How many people would say more around a shared meal than they ever would in a traditional session. That question has never left her.
When she is not in a session, she is likely in her kitchen, making something, thinking something through. The kitchen and the clinic are not separate worlds for her. They run on the same instinct: to create the conditions in which someone can finally be honest.
THE TABLE WAS ALWAYS THE POINT
Care begins at the table.
The kitchen and the clinic are not separate worlds for her. They run on the same instinct: to create the conditions in which someone can finally be honest.
WHAT ILORA IS BUILT ON
Every person who walks into a clinical or legal space deserves someone who can hold their story with precision and with care.
Immigration Evaluations
For attorneys who need a clinician who understands the stakes. For clients who need someone who will actually see them.
ACTIVE NOW
Culinary Art Therapy and Wellness
Expanding what a therapeutic space can look like. For individuals, groups, and organizations ready for something beyond the traditional format.
COMING SOON
Clinical Supervision for MSWs
For social workers building toward licensure who want supervision that can hold a range of clinical interests, wherever your practice is taking you.
COMING SOON
Organizational Wellness Consulting
Clinical consultation for organizations navigating team wellness, leadership development, and evidence-based care models.
COMING SOON
Qualifications
CREDENTIALS AND LICENSURE
Florida Qualified Supervisor (LCSW-QS)
Approved to provide clinical supervision to MSWs pursuing LCSW licensure in the state of Florida.
FL LCSW-QS
Education
Doctor of Social Work (DSW)
Also holds MSW and BSW
Service Area
Virtual across all actively licensed states
Clinical License
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)
Languages
English · French · Haitian Creole
Additional languages via qualified professional interpreter
Active Licenses
FL · CA · CO · IL · MA · MD · NV · VA
Pending: Alaska
Experience
10+ years across clinical practice, school-based therapy, private practice, clinical leadership, supervision and training
Manifesto
01
I believe that a story told well is its own form of clinical evidence
02
I believe that not every person who needs to be heard needs a diagnosis to prove it.
03
I believe that some people carry experiences so heavy that the most powerful thing you can do is help them put those experiences into words that someone else will finally take seriously.
04
I believe that your story has clinical weight. It does not need a label to matter.
05
I believe in building the full picture. Not just what fits the form. Everything that is true.
06
I believe that presence is the most underrated clinical skill.
07
I believe that listening, really listening, is the most important thing we do here. And we do it well.
08
I believe it works out. I knew it at 16, with nothing but a new country and my family beside me, with everything I did not have and everything I was still learning to want. I did not know what this country held for me. I
knew enough to keep going. I know it still.
09
I believe that is the only thing a young immigrant needs to be told: keep going. Not fast. Not perfectly. Just forward.
10
I believe in inviting. In listening. In openness. In relationships. In attunement.
I built ILORA because I wanted a space where all of that could live together.
PERPETUE K. AUGUSTIN, DSW, LCSW