We hold the tension that the current healthcare system is largely not designed for the needs of the communities we serve, or the needs of our clinicians and healers. Further, access to health insurance is currently heavily tied to employment and financial resources within a grossly inequitable system. We also acknowledge that the current systems will not be dismantled overnight and that we are committed to paying our workers a competitive living wage, especially those who take on the healing and liberation work for communities that they themselves are a part of. Currently, we are navigating this tension by doing our best to: (1) only accepting health insurance plans that do not violate mental health parity laws, overly limit or intrude into the therapeutic process, or create an undue administrative burden; (2) paying our clinicians well for their work, regardless of a client’s ability to pay; (3) whenever possible, creating individualized arrangements in alignment with a client’s individual financial situation and access to resources- high quality therapy should be available to all!
We believe that healing, transformation, and liberation require connection, healing, growth and reckoning at the individual, community, and societal levels. We believe in Collective Action for Collective Healing.
We center the agency & autonomy of individuals and communities in our work. People are experts by experience and this should be at the heart of our movement building, advocacy, therapies, learning, healing, and points of connection. This means we are firmly anti-carceral, believe deeply in bodily autonomy of all forms, and recognize and reckon with the reality that we live in a country where people have been- and are- sold, subjugated, invaded, and otherwise oppressed and dehumanized. This is especially true for Black, Indigenous and Transgender people, as well as people of color and those who are disabled and/or displaced. In centering the self-determination of our clients, our clinicians (especially our white clinicians) are actively committed to ongoing antiracist learning and accountability. Ongoing recognition and engagement with intersectionality, our histories, and our communities is necessary for healing work to take place.
We cultivate space and opportunity, within therapy and beyond, to reimagine and access futures, relationships, and existence beyond systems and histories of oppression. We recognize and embrace interconnection and multiple ways of being and knowing. We decenter white and western ideals of health, ability, behavior, and hegemony. We believe that healing does not have to mean pain or a loss of autonomy and that you are the expert on your experiences, what you need, who you are, and how things should be. We embrace ancestral, familial and cultural wisdom, knowledge, strengths and perspectives and affirm that therapy is inherently political.
We offer therapies and healing that is grounded in a praxis, grounded in context, and grounded in theory. We recognize the myth of neutrality and grapple with this personally, professionally, and collectively. We are healers who are personally committed to ongoing growth, learning, healing, and redistribution of power & resources. We draw upon theories and therapeutic techniques that are bottom-up (rather than top-down) including Liberation Psychology, Contemporary Psychodynamic thought, and Client Centered & Humanistic/Existential traditions, among others.
