My commitment to healing spaces
In 2019, I left my full time role in nonprofit leadership and, inspired by my experiences with generative somatics, I went back to school to become a therapist. After experiencing both the life-affirming joy and fulfillment of strategic organizing work, but also its burnout, triggers, and trauma, I wanted to know what it takes to truly heal, and if our movements could be healing spaces.
Our movements are full of people, like myself, who seek to address our own wounding through organizing. This is a beautiful strength. This makes the work deeply powerful, impactful, and rooted. But unfortunately, our organizations can sometimes be places that deepen our wounding rather than providing healing. Sometimes we approach the work in ways that prevent rather than nurture true healing.
I believe it is possible to do both individual and collective healing, as they are inextricable. Healing is something that we do in connection, in community, as an act of faith in something greater.
As a therapist, I see that the most powerful healing interventions my clients experience is when they are able to connect with something greater than themselves whether that is community, purpose, culture, land or spirit.
I believe that organizations can be places where people find that “something greater.” Our organizations can honor individuals’ healing journey, while also bringing about collective impact.
My offering to social change organizations
I am currently accepting clients who are interested in building organizational programming to increase community-level wellness while working towards structural change. Potential projects that we could do together:
- Training on trauma stewardship, assessing and addressing burnout and workplace stress
- Healing circles for members & constituents affected by systemic issues
- Mental health awareness trainings for service providers or constituent-facing staff
- Incorporating mental health awareness and trauma informed practices into existing programs
I currently work part time with a community mental health agency, and also see clients through my small private practice, Torogoz Counseling. To refer individuals to 1-on-1 therapy, please contact me there.
An offering to the Salvadoran diaspora
I first visited my family’s home country of El Salvador when I was 19 years old. Since then, I have spent many years re-weaving the fabric that connects me to my family, culture, and community. My personal healing journey would not have been possible without this connection to my lineage. In El Salvador, I have contributed to social movements, family reconnections, and cultural preservation efforts. These experiences have led me to understand the importance of diasporic return.
Healing justice is rooted in place and ancestral technologies. There is no “active ingredient” of liberation that can be extracted from the synergistic webs of life, human and wild.
Without roots we whither. Without interdependence we sicken and die. Without access to what the soil remembers, what our ancestors carried through all that happened to them, we become adrift, vulnerable to isolation, illusion, and despair.
For healing to stay true…it must stay rooted in specificity, in lineage, in the sensual, cellular, local, relational, mycelial, historical, ancestral, evolutionary.”
Aurora Levins Morales in Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety
It is natural for a displaced or exiled people to feel a sense of generational loss, an imprecise yearning to belong. I envision a healing project that is an invitation to diasporic Salvadorans to come home. This may mean building virtual connections, visiting regularly, or a permanent return. In this, we recognize that our healing is intertwined with the healing of the land, the preservation of culture, and the connections with family and community.
If this is intriguing to you, please reach out to learn more via my instagram page. I can’t wait to meet you and weave with you.
Mid-Flight Consulting 