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Our Story Family Resiliency and Connection
Dr. Dawn, the founder of Family Renewed, is a board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist in practice for over 30 years. She has always valued family, but after life’s unexpected twists and turns and an early divorce, as a single working mother, she understood the complexities of work-life balance and the need to anticipate challenges in your life in order to build the family that you want. So, when she met her husband more than 25 years ago, and they knew they wanted to blend their family, they knew they needed a plan so they would not make the mistakes they had made in the past. Utilizing her professional and personal experience, his disciplined acumen, and their spiritual foundation, they created an environment where their blended family could thrive. Ten years later, because of the challenges military families were experiencing on the isolated military installation they were stationed at, Dr. Porter, who was working as a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist on the military post, created a resiliency program for military families to navigate the challenges they were facing. She facilitated a military family retreat, implementing strategies she has learned from her professional and personal life. As a blended military family mom of six (yours, mine and ours) who has lived and worked in the “civilian” world for most of her adult life and in more than 10 different communities across the country, she offers unique insights into challenges families face and provides proven methods to strengthen and support them. Her passion for helping families flourish, combined with her informative and relatable style, contributes to the effectiveness of Family Renewed Master Classes, Workshops and Retreats.
Our Founder
A graduate of Sumner Academy of Arts and Science in Kansas City, Kansas, Dr. Porter received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University in California and her Medical Degree from Meharry Medical College in Tennessee. She began her training in Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine and completed it at the University of Illinois, at Chicago where she also completed her subspecialty training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Dr. Porter has worked in inpatient, outpatient and consultative settings and has held such titles as Director of Outpatient Alternative Services, Medical Director of the Child and Adolescent Inpatient unit and Director of Outpatient Children’s Services. Dr. Porter has also worked in Emergency Psychiatric Services. Prior to moving to the St. Louis Metropolitan area, Dr. Porter worked as a civilian contractor to the government where she provided face-to-face and tele-psychiatric services to military families including those on installations with little or no access to psychiatric care. Dr. Porter had her own private practice in the St. Louis, MetroEast Metropolitan area and currently is an Associate Professor in Clinical Psychiatry in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Illinois.