Ashley Biden to open a ‘wellness space for women impacted by trauma’ in Philly

Ashley Biden, only child of President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, said she hopes to open “a wellness space for women impacted by trauma” in collaboration with Mural Arts Philadelphia, according to a new story in Elle magazine.

Biden has recently been facilitating a cohort of about 15 women who are part of Mural Arts’ Women’s Reentry Program, in which formerly incarcerated women are paid to do public art projects and job training. In Elle, she described the center she hopes to open in Philadelphia as an extension of that work, “a drop-in space where women can eat a healthy meal, hit the treadmill or box, listen to guided meditation, and access therapies including EMDR [eye movement desensitization and reprocessing] and infrared saunas.”

The new space will be in the Poplar neighborhood of North Philadelphia; The Inquirer is not printing the exact address to maintain the privacy of potential clients. A representative for Biden confirmed plans for the center but declined to comment further.

Mural Arts said it was eager to continue working with Biden, though the exact details of the wellness center are still being worked out.

“This is a developing endeavor rather than something that’s already set up,” said executive director Jane Golden in an interview with The Inquirer. “It’s an idea that we think has real merit, because we’re looking for our participants to have a place to turn to after they leave.”

Golden said she first met Biden when the president’s daughter was working in Wilmington more than 15 years ago. Biden visited Mural Arts in Philly with her staff at the time and kept in touch with the organization over the years. When her father was running for president, she visited the Women’s Reentry Program.

The program enrolls 15 to 25 women who were formerly incarcerated or on probation. During 18-week sessions, the women attend classes and trainings while also working on public art projects across the city, Golden said; they’re paid $15 an hour.

Biden has a master’s in social work from the University of Pennsylvania and is applying for a doctorate in clinical social work there, according to Elle. She has a particular interest in supporting women who have graduated from the Women’s Reentry Program, which is where she sees her wellness center playing a role, Golden said.

“When trauma is deep, a five-month program is just not enough,” Golden said. “What happens afterward is of vital importance.”

Separately, Biden is also working to bring a trauma recovery center to Philly based on a model developed at the University of California, San Francisco, according to Elle.

Biden considers Philadelphia her adopted hometown, said Elle reporter Kayla Webley Adler, who wrote that Ashley Biden and her brother Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, would have breakfast at the Kimpton Hotel Monaco every Friday after he finished chemotherapy. It’s not clear what neighborhood Biden calls home, but she posed on the marble steps of the American Philosophical Society’s Library Hall near Independence Square for the story.

Of her work with the women of Mural Arts, Webley Adler wrote, Biden “taught them about generational trauma and attachment theory; she brought in a Reiki instructor; they role-played uncomfortable scenarios and discussed coping mechanisms for difficult moments. For one meeting, she brought her group to a recording studio to freestyle. They performed a group song, set to Lauryn Hill’s ‘Doo-Wop (That Thing),’ with altered lyrics, which Ashley sings for me: ‘World, you know you better watch out/’cause Philly girls are only about/healing, healing, healing.’”