About Dr. Rae Sandler Simon
Licensed Clinical Psychologist | Founder of Live & Love Well™
I'm Dr. Rae Sandler Simon, a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of Live & Love Well ™, a practice devoted to couples work and adult wellness in Colorado, Hawai'i, and across 40+ PSYPACT states. I'm a Denver native with deep roots in Hawai'i, and both places shape how I work: grounded, unhurried, connected.
Clients describe my style as honest, warm, and deeply compassionate. I blend evidence-based tools with intuitive insight, humor, and heart. Sessions are practical, soulful, expansive, and grounded in genuine care.
How I Got Here
I didn't take a straight path to becoming a psychologist. I earned a BBA and a Spanish minor at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and went to work as a management consultant at a top-five firm. The work was interesting, and something was missing.
That pull led me to the nonprofit world, helping refugees and political and religious asylees build new lives here. It was demanding and often heartbreaking, and it taught me that healing is never only individual. It happens in relationship, in community, and in the slow, courageous act of rebuilding what has been disrupted.
I earned my Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (PsyD) from the University of Denver Graduate School of Professional Psychology, focused on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy & Couples and Communications.
That dual background, business and psychology, still shapes my work with professionals, leaders, and entrepreneurs moving through burnout, identity shifts, and transitions. My clinical foundation includes Solution-Focused Couples Therapy, ACT, and psychodynamic approaches, and I work eclectically, tailoring the work to you.
What I Know About Pain, Personally
I live with chronic pain and autoimmune disease, including two spinal fusions. For a long time I didn't see how much pain had quietly shaped my days, until I slowed down and listened to my body. Through mindfulness, movement, and support, I've learned to live with it rather than survive it.
So I don't only understand chronic illness and invisible struggle clinically. I understand them in my body.
Why Couples Therapy Is My Passion
My commitment to couples therapy is rooted in personal experience. I grew up in a family where love was tested and strengthened through effort and honesty, and I have carried that into my own marriage of nearly 20 years. Thriving relationships don't happen by chance. They are built.
The question I am asked most is whether being a couples therapist means I have a perfect marriage. I don't. Being married to a relationship expert does not make a marriage perfect. It gives us a shared language and the skills to use it, and that makes the hard parts easier alongside someone I truly love.
My husband and I have our good days and our not-so-good days, and we keep choosing each other. That is what I want for the couples I work with. Not perfection, but the willingness and the tools to keep choosing.
Identity, Faith, and Belonging
As a Jewish woman, spirituality and cultural identity are core parts of who I am. I bring that depth into my practice while keeping the room open to everyone.
Many Jewish individuals and families want a therapist who understands their experience without being asked to explain it. Rising antisemitism, the complexity of Jewish identity, the particular grief and resilience of belonging to a historically marginalized community: I hold these with care. Whether you want therapy rooted in shared cultural understanding or simply a place of warmth and acceptance, you are welcome here.
The Jewish value of tikkun olam, repairing the world, guides how I practice: protecting your privacy and dignity, offering scholarship-based care, honoring your whole identity in the room.
Outside the Office
I stay grounded through Pilates, hiking, ballet barre, skiing, art, reading, and time outdoors with my husband, our two teenagers, and our fur babies. I am a former mogul skier, which explains a few things about how I approach hard terrain.
I am an Executive Board Member and affordable-care clinician at Gesher Community Care. I also volunteer as the on-call psychologist for families at Brent's Place in Denver and the Tūtū and Me Home Visiting Program in Hawai'i, two organizations close to my heart.
