Featured Speaker:

“Maintaining Good Mental Health
While Living with Uncertainty”

Louise Blissenbach Stemp

Louise J. Blissenbach Stemp is a licensed independent clinical social worker with over 40 years of experience in mental health. She is presently the owner of Marillac Counseling, providing individual, marriage and family counseling in a rural southeast Minnesota community. The School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND) have been an integral part of her life starting at St. Matthew’s School, St. Paul, Minn., Good Counsel Academy, Mankato, Minn., and Mount Mary College (now University), Milwaukee, Wis. The SSND enhanced her desire to serve others with faith and shaped her choices in the process.

She received her Master’s in Social Work from St. Louis University with an emphasis on children and family. Louise also had licensure in addictions and chemical dependency for over 30 years. Her career began with Catholic Charities in Mankato and later in Winona, Minn. Her focus was unmarried parents, foster care, adoptions, marriage and family, plus various groups.

Most of her career has been spent in the private sector with a multi-disciplinary team emphasizing individual, marriage, family and group counseling. Throughout her career she has been blessed with wise figures who encouraged and challenged her skills.

She has continued her involvement in the religious community personally and professionally by assisting seminarians, priests and religious groups in various capacities. Louise is active in her parish and diocese and served as an advocate for sexual abuse victims for five years.

The seed to help others was planted when Louise was in the primary grades. She recalls telling her grandmother that when she grew up, she wanted to give all the kids who did not have a home – a home. Thus, began a journey led by the Spirit for which she feels so grateful and so blessed.

Louise has a wonderful, patient husband and two sons, one in heaven from a miscarriage, and one a young adult. She enjoys cooking, entertaining, hiking, cross country skiing, ice skating, reading and having fun.

It is her faith that sustains her and is woven throughout her life.

For more information, contact:
Heather Spann | 507-389-4230 | hspann@ssndcp.org