ABOUT RITA

My style is playful, motivating and filled with care and compassion!

As a licensed psychotherapist (LCSW #109144), wellness coach, consultant, educator, and speaker, my work is deeply rooted in transformative justice, liberation, and anti-oppressive practices. It is my goal to collaborate with individuals and communities to co-create safe spaces where folx can flourish in their authenticity. I have facilitated a number of holistic mental health and wellness workshops and trainings for student groups at higher educational institutions and community-based organizations across the nation. The diverse groups I have supported include formerly incarcerated people, current/former foster youth, survivors of gender-based violence, BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color), undocumented immigrants/refugees, queer and first-generation students. My own experiences of forced resilience and coming to my own terms of healing intergenerational trauma bring me greater understanding of how to connect to each of these identity groups, as well as the great honor on how to support them achieve joy and ultimate liberation.

photo credit: Dennis Saicocie

Core Values & Practices

My core values and practices are guided through a holistic framework including a further acknowledgement of:

Transformative & Healing Justice

The need to create accessible healing and transformative spaces for communities oppressed by interpersonal and institutional violence and meeting them where they are at. Created by Black femme & women leaders, transformative/healing justice frameworks elevate individual and collective liberation through the means of centering self-care needs, inner work, transformation, and body-based healing strategies to help sustain oneself in the greater movement for social justice and change.

Interdependence

The notion that we as people are interconnected to systems, the land, plants, animals and how we are impacted will send a rippling impact on the environment that surrounds us.

Accountability

Inspired by femme leaders on accountability, the notion that building emotional intimacy, closeness and being in “right relationship” with one another is about messing up and taking responsibility for those mess-ups. I am open for feedback to learn from past, present, and future mistakes in order to grow in community with you.

Somatic practices

The body as a navigational system filled with trillions of cells that are constantly impacted by surrounding institutions and systems. Integrating embodied movement work and breath can allow for greater connection between the spiritual self, heart, and mind.

Intergenerational wisdom & resilience

Keeping in mind the ancestral wisdom and cultural traditions passed from previous generations that resource us in navigating challenging situations.

Individual & collective action

Committing to action on an individual/collective level that strengthens our authentic truths.