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It's not always easy finding the right healer
for you... Especially if you're in a polyamorous relationship, and you need some new skills to negotiate with your partners about having kids... ** Or toxic masculinity is rearing its vicious head in your new organizing collective, and you need some group practices that help you and your comrades name the harm, sit with its impact, and figure out what's next... ** Or you're trans and transitioned fifteen years ago and are now battling anxiety at a new job where it's both about your gender identity and also not... ** Or you make your money as a sex worker and need some practice setting boundaries so you can deal with your mom... ** Or you're needing to find someone who gets some of the connections between white supremacy and trauma both systemically and also inter-personally, not even because that's the core thing you want to talk about, but because that's your life, and you're having attachment issues come up with your new date and need some new tools... ** Or you want to explore kink as a disabled person of color and you're trying to find someone to talk it out with who can hold the impacts of racism & ableism in your life and also be sex and kink positive... ** Or... |
When you have identities that are
marginalized and often pathologized, finding
the right healer can be BEYOND exhausting.
marginalized and often pathologized, finding
the right healer can be BEYOND exhausting.
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The process of searching for and sussing out a therapist or healer who has the tools you need AND does their own continual work can sometimes be enough to make people quit. I get it. |
This is the place where I'm supposed to tell you about myself.
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Most therapists and healers use this page to drone on and on about all their schoolings and trainings and credentials and yadda yadda, blah blah blah.
I will get to that information in a moment. But first I wanted to sketch for you the kind of client who tends to have the most success with my style of healing, so that you can more easily determine whether I might be a good match with what you're looking for. Then you might want to know more about my background -- but ultimately this is a lot more about you than it is about me. Clients who are most successful when working with me are deeply invested in their own change and transformation, willing to get uncomfortable, motivated to do the heavy lifting, and take responsibility for co-creating the best container for their healing. |
They appreciate that in my practice feedback can and will go both ways, and that I believe we should all be actively invested in creating an honest and caring space.
My clients appreciate my sense of humor and my occasional potty mouth. They know that I care for and will fight for them and that I also don't possess a magic wand and the real healing is up to them.
Many of my clients have been to talk-therapists before. And while they can now recite their histories and details of trauma both backwards and forwards, they came to me because they wanted to learn some tools that would actually make a significant difference in their lives and figure out how to put those tools into practice.
Many of my clients also have had experiences with healers who weren't doing their own work around race, class, gender and ability, and they came to me because they wanted to see someone who takes responsibility for their own ongoing learning and believes it isn't the responsibility of their clients to educate them -- especially on the systemic ways our world dis-enfranchises and traumatizes marginalized people.
My clients come to me because they want someone who believes that understanding and taking action against systems of oppression on an individual, cultural, and systemic level is core to being an ethical, informed and effective healer.
My clients appreciate my sense of humor and my occasional potty mouth. They know that I care for and will fight for them and that I also don't possess a magic wand and the real healing is up to them.
Many of my clients have been to talk-therapists before. And while they can now recite their histories and details of trauma both backwards and forwards, they came to me because they wanted to learn some tools that would actually make a significant difference in their lives and figure out how to put those tools into practice.
Many of my clients also have had experiences with healers who weren't doing their own work around race, class, gender and ability, and they came to me because they wanted to see someone who takes responsibility for their own ongoing learning and believes it isn't the responsibility of their clients to educate them -- especially on the systemic ways our world dis-enfranchises and traumatizes marginalized people.
My clients come to me because they want someone who believes that understanding and taking action against systems of oppression on an individual, cultural, and systemic level is core to being an ethical, informed and effective healer.
I try to be the kind of healer that
I would want to see:
I would want to see:
Some more about
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Because I think it matters: I'm a white settler queer with Ukrainian, English and Prussian ancestry who was raised on occupied Duwamish territory (Pacific Northwest). I identify as a disabled, chronically ill, fat, non-binary, transsexual and femme. I have a mixed class background and am a survivor. I was raised in U.C.C. churches as a small child and in the last couple of years have been practicing anti-zionist Judaism with my raised-Jewish partner.
I don't think that having a particular identity necessarily equals having a political framework about said identity, AND it also matters. For me, all of my identities, marginalized and privileged, are places of deep ongoing engagement at both an interpersonal and systemic level. I believe this is the only way to be an ethical and integrity-filled healer and human being. I have been in study and practice around all things embodiment, trauma, nervous systems and bodies since 2009 with a variety of organizations, schools and individuals including Denise Benson, Embodiment International, Strozzi Institute, Meredith Broome, the Milne Institute, the MacKinnon Body Therapy Center, Generative Somatics, Upledger Institute, and Turtle Tank. I am rooted in social justice movements that are centered in the leadership and vision of disabled, trans, women of color. My visions of liberation & healing are always expanding and blowing up thanks to the genius and the teachings of people like Miss Major, Mia Mingus, Barbara Smith, Janet Mock, Alicia Garza, Ruby Sales, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Isa Noyala, Chelsea Manning, Patrisse Cullors, Patty Berne, Sharyn Grayson, adrienne maree brown, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Linda Sarsour, Pam McMichaels, Eli Clare, Linda Hogan, Yuri Kochiyama, Mab Segrest, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-samarasinha, Caitlin Breedlove and beloved ancestors like Ella Baker, Harvey Milk, James Baldwin, Marsha P. Johnson, Marlyn Buck, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Bob Moses, Audre Lorde, Anne Braden, Octavia Butler, Leslie Feinberg, Barnard Rustin, Grace Lee Boggs, Harriet Tubman and Mary Oliver. I tithe a percentage of my monthly income to social justice organizations who do intersectional, grassroots organizing. I give monthly to
I also donate my time with free / low cost sessions to folks on the front lines like the Water Protectors, people doing southern border solidarity work, Charlottesville anti-fascist organizers, frontline healthcare workers & Tree of Life and Pulse night club survivors. I see individuals and couples in my capacity as a coach and as a licensed bodyworker. |