Professional Consultation
One of the greatest deceptions that colonization has pulled off is to convince us that the ancestors are inert and relegated to the part of history that might be acknowledged but is done--over.
A vital part of decolonizing psychology is re-centering the vitality of ancestral support and connection to the land. When our clients step into the therapy session, they are arriving with the own unique constellation of needs and experiences; however, they are also entering as the living expression of the histories, movements, and ruptures of their people. We meet our clients as our own unique constellation of skills, training, and embodied presence. However, behind us is our own people's histories, movements, and ruptures. If we step into the room with a relationship to our ancestral field that is As therapists, I suggest that when we step into our sessions with clients, having a living and active relationship to the land and our own ancestral support, is as vital as having access to our training, modalities and tools.
in our in our healing journeys. Over the last decade, I have delighted in working with other clinicians who are interested in exploring the reciprocal relationship between our lives, histories, and our work as therapists. On my Therapy page I discuss some of the Western modalities I emphasize in my work. Below, I discuss some of the deeper curiosities that animate my explorations with other therapists.
A vital part of decolonizing psychology is re-centering the vitality of ancestral support and connection to the land. When our clients step into the therapy session, they are arriving with the own unique constellation of needs and experiences; however, they are also entering as the living expression of the histories, movements, and ruptures of their people. We meet our clients as our own unique constellation of skills, training, and embodied presence. However, behind us is our own people's histories, movements, and ruptures. If we step into the room with a relationship to our ancestral field that is As therapists, I suggest that when we step into our sessions with clients, having a living and active relationship to the land and our own ancestral support, is as vital as having access to our training, modalities and tools.
in our in our healing journeys. Over the last decade, I have delighted in working with other clinicians who are interested in exploring the reciprocal relationship between our lives, histories, and our work as therapists. On my Therapy page I discuss some of the Western modalities I emphasize in my work. Below, I discuss some of the deeper curiosities that animate my explorations with other therapists.
When our Ancestors Become the Field of Support in the Therapy Room
When we are going through our training as therapists, oftentimes our ancestors show up as the little shapes on the genograms and the legacies of ruptures that have shaped our own attachment patterns and traumas. We do our own therapy; we do our own work; we keep an eye out for our own stuff.
What if this only scratches the surface of the ancestral field that can be alive in our work?
Among the primary destructive legacies of colonization
Rupture from ancestral support and connection to the land have been among the primary
Do our ancestors have anything to do with our work as therapists?
Does our relationship to the land
When we go to graduate school to become therapists, we are schooled in a collection of theories and modalities that become part of our professional identities. We become a version of lineage-keepers--living expressions of these streams of knowledge and practice. However, beyond studying genograms and the important reality of intergenerational trauma, there is rarely any
One of my beloved elders, Maria Elena Martinez, is very well-known for asking, "what is it that's being asked of us at this time on the planet?" As a therapist, I ask myself this question repeatedly, especially as the world
What are our roles as therapists at this time in history?
How are we supposed to be therapists when the world is on fire?
Where do we anchor our nervous systems when so much around us is crumbling?
What do we have to offer our clients?
I come to this work from the radical acknowledgment that, as a species, we are in desperate need of epistemologies and worldviews (i.e., ways of knowing and navigating) that center interconnectedness and ecological belonging. Western psychology contributes some very helpful tools in working through focused issues and problems. This can be extraordinarily helpful. However, in my experience, mainstream Western psychology is not as helpful when it comes to leaning in with the radical acknowledgment that we, as a species, actually do not have the answers to the cataclysmic challenges that are on the horizon for the planet. Why is this the case? Quite simply it is because the origin story of mainstream Western psychology is deeply entangled with legacies of colonization that have sought to eradicate Indigenous ways of knowing the world over. Not only is there a profound reckoning to be made for these legacies, but there is a need for humble admission the we have cut ourselves off from ways of knowing and belonging that could make a profound difference to our Earth home.
The Circle, Kinship Worldview
Fifteen years ago, I was a first-year graduate student in counseling psychology. On a regular basis, I teetered on the verge of dropping out of school. While my studies were interesting, there was an unavoidable ache in my soul. I knew that what I was studying didn't reflect the depths of what I knew to be true in the world around me.
By a series of synchronicities and answered prayers to my ancestors, I stumbled into a community of Indigenous and Chicanx elders in Austin, TX who were organized under the name Alma de Mujer (soul of woman). They took me under their wings, and without my even understanding what was happening, they started to work on me, mentor me, and model for me a way of being that I would never learn in the books. In short, they set about to help me decolonize and reclaim the Indigenous ways of knowing of my ancestors.
By a series of synchronicities and answered prayers to my ancestors, I stumbled into a community of Indigenous and Chicanx elders in Austin, TX who were organized under the name Alma de Mujer (soul of woman). They took me under their wings, and without my even understanding what was happening, they started to work on me, mentor me, and model for me a way of being that I would never learn in the books. In short, they set about to help me decolonize and reclaim the Indigenous ways of knowing of my ancestors.
Visiting Madre del Mundo at Alma de Mujer, Austin, TX.
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My elders at Alma introduced me to a kincentric system of knowledge, a kinship worldview,* that brings humans down to size. From this approach, humans are not unimportant, but they have their place alongside the rest of creation: plants, animals, fungi, the land in all forms, the elements, ancestors, descendants, everything seen and unseen, the cosmos. Everything constituting a sacred circle of dynamic interdependency. Knowledge not being limited to the cognitive mind. Knowledge not being something that is individually owned but collectively held and cultivated. Personhood not being limited to the human. From this dynamic lifeworld, humans are not alone, nor burdened with needing to have answers for everything. The exact opposite is real.
I centered my entire dissertation on a collaborative dialogue with my elders at Alma de Mujer. We talked about their histories, their stories, and their passion for reclaiming and recentering Indigenous ways of knowing and healing at this time on the planet. I wrote about what our community elders have to teach Western psychology and how we, as therapists, might lean into ways of knowing that honor deep roots of healing on the planet. |
You can read about my time learning from the community of elders at Alma de Mujer in Austin, TX. Their history and my own journey with them as a psychologist is the heart of my dissertation, which you can download here:
Con Alma: Dialogues in Decolonizing Counseling: Reciprocal Ethnographic Explorations in Indigenous Spaces for Community Healing
Con Alma: Dialogues in Decolonizing Counseling: Reciprocal Ethnographic Explorations in Indigenous Spaces for Community Healing
Work with Me and Explore How to Listen
If you are a clinician interested in leaning into a kinship worldview in your work, I welcome your inquiry. I offer a free 20-minute Zoom consult to explore a fit for working together. I believe very strongly that we are all called to express our skills and gifts in unique ways. My aim is not to have you replicate how I work. Quite the contrary. My intention is for us to listen in together to the web of belonging, the sacred circle, and begin to discern the ways your work is being woven into a kincentric world.
Please reach out to me at [email protected]
My fee for professional consultation is $175 for 50 minutes.
I reserve sliding scale slots for trainees and early career professionals.
Please reach out to me at [email protected]
My fee for professional consultation is $175 for 50 minutes.
I reserve sliding scale slots for trainees and early career professionals.
*For an introduction to the Kinship Worldview, see the collaborative work by Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D., Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth.
There is a field of unimaginable belonging beckoning to us.
