Mx. Kel Pattison

“Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.”

-Audre Lorde

Therapy is a healing relationship in which our pain can held with care and compassion. Our pain is a compass that tells us something important about our experiences and what we need in order to heal. I view healing as finding a place of rootedness and expansiveness within ourselves so that it becomes more and more difficult for our experiences of pain and oppression to throw us off balance. It is finding spaces within ourselves and community to live into our creativity and freedom. It is understanding that our individual healing and community healing are intertwined – that when we are well, our community can be well, and when our community is well, we can be well.

I approach healing as a collaborative process which values the lived-experience wisdom we both bring into the room. Through sharing our stories, we create space to understand the wisdom our bodies and emotions hold. In healing relationship, we practice moving toward actions that align with our values and dreams (personal, cultural, and collective). Over time, we learn which actions and practices resonate with us and move us toward a life of liberation and healing even in the midst of ongoing trauma and oppression.

My perspectives on healing are informed by my experiences in community organizing, transformative justice, and clinical psychology training. If you have any questions or curiosities about working together, I would love to hear from you!