Traditional therapy was coming up short. Having recently completed her graduate program in counseling, Jennifer Bullock was working with children in Philadelphia. But she was questioning her methods.

“Many therapists will say the key to a good therapeutic process is your relationship with your client,” she says. With traditional psychology, that often means having a client-centered relationship. “The therapist is the authority who knows. The client is the broken person who doesn’t know, and my job is to fix you.”

For many practitioners, that approach can work. For Jenn, it felt constricting. “I was getting disillusioned,” she says. “I saw firsthand, after a few years, that traditional psychology was not effective. It was like a mouse on a wheel.” She wanted something more to support her clients.

Around the same time, she was also looking for counseling. Sometimes therapists also need therapy. She came across Elizabeth, who introduced herself as a “social therapist.” That was intriguing.

“I’ve got a psychology degree, and I’m a therapist too. I don’t even know what that term is,” she said. Jenn began rambling to Elizabeth about some of her personal challenges, only to receive curt response back: “Well, what’s the crisis about that?” 

“I wanted to punch her and hug her at the same time,” Jenn said. “Partly social therapy is that. It’s asking questions that are provoking us to see, feel, think, and live in different ways.” It emphasizes both the client and therapist working together towards self-discovery. 

“I don’t have any preset answers, and you don’t have any preset of where you have to be,” Jenn says. All parties are working towards a shared understanding. “Let’s figure out how you and I together are going to build a relationship so that you can heal and grow.” She went back to school to build a new practice.

Social therapy appealed to Jenn because it refused to restrain the client. It was a practice “that wasn’t trying to adjust people in an unjust world but helping us discover our own sense of power and agency.”

For those who knew Jenn, that sentiment would not have been a surprise. That desire to develop agency also was shaping her life outside of her job—through theater.

“I was really fascinated by how theater can be a tool for helping empower people.” She had no professional training in the performing arts, though she and her friends were eager to give it a try. “We wanted to self-consciously build a community with folks who were trained artists and theater practitioners, alongside people that had never done that kind of creative work, as a way to help find a sense of power and agency.”

Jenn placed calls for volunteers through platforms like Indeed and Youth Volunteers of America, bringing in a range of performers, from spoken word artists to singers. They staged shows on street corners and at venues like the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. “A couple of years, we got our plays showcased in the city paper,” she says.

After a few years–by now, it was the early 2000s–it seemed like an apt time to pivot. Many of those friends, in addition to Jenn, were political independents. It was not an easy time to be an independent back then, when Jenn would often receive condescension: “What are you talking about? Why aren’t you a Democrat? I don’t understand. Okay, spoiler, bye.” She envisioned creating a new space, calling it Independent Pennsylvanians.

Their focus wasn’t about creating “spoilers” or creating a political party for independents as much as building agency. Some of their friends supported Ralph Nader and were having trouble getting signatures, so they worked on ballot access measures.

“And then after a few years,” Jenn says, “there was more of a conversation around, ‘Well, independent voters can’t even vote in all the elections.’” Pennsylvania’s election code prohibited independents from participating in primary elections. As a group of a few friends, they began to bring attention to the issue.

“We would do a lot of stuff like grassroots organizing. We’d go to Reading Terminal Market and have a little table.” It was not unlike how they would approach passersby on the street during their years of political theater. They continued with their outreach and grew their list of supporters.

Not long after, they went to Harrisburg to talk to legislators about the issue. One State Representative by the name of Eugene DePasquale was sympathetic and introduced a bill. He didn’t get much support from other legislators.

“Back then, he might have had two sponsors,” Jenn says. They continued to advocate for years, seeking more co-sponsors and growing their list of supporters.

Then, a non-profit organization reached out. It was a few years before the pandemic, and David Thornburgh was the President and CEO of a Philadelphia-based non-profit called the Committee of Seventy.

“David reached out to me, and we had lunch,” Jenn says. “And he said, ‘I don’t know what I can do, but I want to move towards forming a coalition of some sorts.” Jenn responded with affirmation: “Good, because we can use all the help. We’re just a few citizen activists, no budget over here, but we have a lineage.” A couple of years later, they created Ballot PA, a coalition of different organizations seeking to change the election code.

Now, bills not unlike DePasquale’s come out every legislative session with co-sponsors from both parties. Bills passed the State Senate in 2019 and the State House as an amendment in 2024. The legislation still needs to make its way through both chambers during the same session, which a divided legislature can make difficult. But Jenn remains optimistic—and proud of what’s been accomplished.

“I think my experience as a group therapist and facilitator helped me build a team that has been around for many years together,” she says. It’s all been in service of creating “an environment where people can feel empowered.”