Decolonizing Therapy

(aka Re-Indigenizing Therapy)

Healing through Liberation, Connection, and Ancestral Wisdom

Colonization has severed many of us from our ancestral knowledge, land-based traditions, and indigenous ways of healing—whether through forced assimilation, displacement, or cultural erasure. These disconnections have shaped how we experience pain, how we make meaning of our struggles, and how we attempt to heal.

Decolonizing therapy is not a trend—it's a reclamation. It is a return to wholeness by recognizing that much of what we call “mental illness” is often a natural response to the unnatural systems we live under—racism, capitalism, ableism, patriarchy, colonialism, and more.

My Approach Is Rooted In:

  • Acknowledging historical and intergenerational trauma that continues to shape our nervous systems, relationships, and identities.

  • Offering consent and choice at every step of the process—your body, your story, your pace.

  • Using affirming and liberatory language that centers your humanity and wholeness rather than labels rooted in deficit or pathology.

  • Shifting from "what's wrong with you" to "what happened to you and what’s around you?"
    We’re not here to fix you. We’re here to support you in navigating, resisting, and healing from the oppressive systems that harm us.

  • Uplifting cultural and ancestral healing practices as valid, powerful, and worthy of space in the therapeutic process.

  • Honoring the Indigenous cultures from which many somatic practices originated by engaging with them respectfully and ethically.

  • Centering relational, communal ways of healing rather than pathologizing individual responses to systemic harm.

  • Valuing well-being over productivity—you are not your output. Healing is not a performance.

A Note on My Role

I do not position myself as the expert of your experience. I walk beside you—offering tools, care, and culturally grounded presence. I invite your full self to the work: your stories, your ancestors, your practices, your questions, and your truth.

My Lineage and Commitments

I live and work on the ancestral lands of the Hitchiti and Muscogee (Creek) peoples, known today as Atlanta, Georgia. I honor their enduring presence and resistance. As a descendant of African peoples, I am deeply rooted in my ancestral lineage, carrying both the pain and power of those who came before me.

My practice is grounded in equity, cultural humility, and systems understanding, always guided by the wisdom of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.

I give deepest thanks and recognition to the healers, thinkers, and visionaries who continue to shape my work and consciousness, including:

Tricia Hersey, Dr. Jennifer Mullan, Resmaa Menakem, Tamala Floyd, Shenikka Moore-Clarke, Amrit-Sadhana, Dr. David Grand, Dr. Gabor Maté, Deran Young, and countless unnamed ancestors and freedom fighters.

I honor the Indigenous wisdom at the core of many of the modalities I use—Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), psychedelic medicine work, and inner child healing. I am committed to using these tools ethically, with reverence, and with gratitude for their roots.

Lastly, I acknowledge the inner healing wisdom gifted to me by my ancestors, which allows me to continuously examine and deconstruct the internalized messages of oppressive systems. This inner work shapes how I hold space, how I support, and how I commit to learning and evolving with integrity.