today you woke up
looked at yourself in the mirror
and said:
i am a beautiful revolution
i am alive
and i can love myself,
and i can begin.
again.
AVA
Hello. My name is Paloma.
I am a queer-cis (she/ella) Xicana who is a borderlands Mestiza and Nepantlera of multiracial Mexican/Xicanx Indigenous and Spanish Basque descent. I am a Nuevamexicana Norteña, I come to Seattle, Washington from rural Northern New Mexico and beloved fierce Xicanx, Hispaña, Tewa, and Apache community. I live with a progressive autoimmune illness and as a result invisible disabilities. My own journey of healing complex, psychiatric, intergenerational, and historical trauma has brought me to this work with deep intention and humility, and in persistent practice of honoring my healing as the cultivation of mi querencia - the spaces I feel my most authentic self, embodied sanctuary, and finding all the ways I am my most creative and expressive self, honoring the wisdom-strength-resilience within my lineages, at my intersections, and centering mí cultura.
I am fiercely politicized as a healer, grounded in community wisdom and ever-evolving visions and practices of decolonial liberation, Xicanx/Indigenous, and earth-connected healing and transformation. As a social justice worker and clinical activist, I view the healing journey as a birthright for liberation, a practice for individuals and community that is a sacred, complex, messy, and beautiful path towards both personal and collective transformative change. I support healing in all the ways healing happens; tending to the personal, spiritual, somatic, expressive, creative, embodied, and the deep historical, political, economic, social, and structurally oppressive contexts by which we are living in and do our healing work. Healing does not mean to by-pass these realities. It means to hold hope and grief simultaneously and accompanying joy and rest to meet us where we are at. A healing journey can hold us in our deepest humanity as we resist, challenge, voice up, truth tell, deconstruct, de/internalize, and imagine differently. I believe in healing as our deepest and fiercest resistance to oppression, as a way to continue healing for our cultural and community resilience, and as a liberatory practice of embodied reclamation, transformation and (r)evolution.
My own healing is centered in creative, expressive, embodied, and intentional practices. Attuning to embodied somatic wisdom, Honoring a present moment. Discovering small delights and simple joys while grieving. Cultivating reciprocation with tierra madre. Connecting to and being with community and collective experiences. Engaging in creative expression through writing, weaving, collage, assemblage, photography, paper cutting, lino and screen printing, music, and danza. Decolonizing the journey and needs in health and wellness. Rooting in the expansive wisdoms of disability justice and seeing cultura as a important medicine. These are a few things that have profoundly guided my own healing, and therefore how I offer healing to others.
As a Xicana Mestiza Nepantlera, I specialize in supporting Xicanx, Hispañ@, Latine/x Indigenous, Native, First Nation peoples and BIPoC peoples with multiethnic, bi-racial, cross-cultural identities. I am a disability justice centered healer, coming from my own disability experiences, being raised by intergenerational disabled caregivers, and activism in collaboration with disabled and neurodivergent peoples. As a cis-queer, disabled, Xicana, I am fierce in honoring and affirming the unique journeys of 2SLGBTQIA+, nonbinary, gender fluid, gender non-conforming folks in resilience and fierceness and honoring healing at the intersections of multiple identity experiences.
I am a licensed clinical social (justice) worker (MSW, LICSW) and Registered Expressive Arts Therapist (REAT). I am a clinical activist, oriented in multimodal, culturally integrative, somatic and expressive centered approaches including plática/narrative/story, expressive arts, somatic experiencing, sensorimotor psychotherapy, EMDR, and the community and theoretical wisdoms of Xicanx, Indigenous, liberation, community, and eco-psychologies.
I have over 26 years of experience working in social services, community care work, grassroots organizing, intimate partner/interpersonal violence/abuse, vulnerable adult abuse, community violence intervention, youth healing and empowerment, disability rights, disability services and independent living centers, BIPoC and Queer disability histories, services for unhoused disabled folks, as co-chair of a human rights commission, as a restorative justice, victim/offender mediation, intergroup dialogues facilitator, mixed race, bi-cultural and intersectional identity exploration, queer resilience, culture-centered healing, abolition and anti-oppressive social justice work.
I am also an adjunct lecturer at the University of Washington. I teach BA and MSW level social work courses. I also offer community healing opportunities for non-profit community organizations, state and county social services providers, other healers, and in Seattle high schools.
See other offerings HERE
Academics & Training
Academics
Currently pursuing a PhD in Depth Psychology with a focus on Indigenous, Community, Liberation & Eco Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA.
Master of Social Work (MSW) focus on Community Centered Integrative Practice and Multicultural Mental Health, University of Washington, Seattle WA. June 2014,
BA in Ethnic Studies, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. June 2008,
BA in History, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. June 2008,
License
Licensed Clinical Social Worker, License # LW61167644, Washington State
Registered Expressive Arts Therapist, International Expressive Arts Therapy Association
Certifications
Expressive Arts Therapy Certificate, Northwest Creative and Expressive Arts Institute, (Jun 2019)
Somatic Experiencing Somatic Experiencing International (3 years) (Beg. I, II, III - Int. I, II, III - Adv. I) (Jun. 2020 – Jun. 2023)
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (L1. Trauma Themes & L2. Developmental Injury) (Jun. 2020 – Nov. 2021)
Somatic Stress Release, The Embody Lab (Jan. 2023)
Embodied Transformation & Liberation, The Embody Lab (Dec. 2022)
Somatic Attachment & Healing ,The Embody Lab (Dec. 2022)
EMDR I & II Certificate, EMDR Institute (Oct. 2019 - Feb. 2020)
EMDR and Expressive Arts Certificate, Institute for Creative Mindfulness (Oct. – Dec. 2022)
WPATH Gender Affirming Letter Writing, Washington State Society for Clinical Social Work (Aug. 2022)
Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, International Association of Trauma Professionals, (May 2019)
Psychodynamic Clinical Theory and Practice Certification, Wellspring Family Services, (May 2017)
Lifespan Integration I & II, Lifespan Integration Institute (Feb. - Apr. 2019)
Professional Mediation Certificate, University of Oregon, School of Law (Aug. 2006)
Crisálida is a metaphor for healing. I choose the name Crisálida for my practice, meaning chrysalis in Spanish, because healing is a slow and steady process of transformation. Lepidoptera or butterfly species, engage in a process of metamorphosis, while being held in their crisálida (cocoon). They transform, wholly, from one being into another. In their crisálida they are able to be vulnerable enough to be in the mucky, messy, goo of change, eventually becoming something different. Healing and transformation is not simple, quick, or intellectual. The change through an embodied process, trusting their own inherent power, and following their ancestral wisdom. Butterflies remain their essential self throughout the process, but also become something entirely different. A healing space should also feel like a crisálida; a place where the changes happening is centered on your needs, a place that is safe-enough, a space that allows you to attune to your ancestral wisdoms and offers what you need to make this radical and vulnerable transformation. Healing is often messy, can be difficult, confusing and uncomfortable. There tends to be a lot of grief leaving one way of being for another, and it often feels strange as it affects every part of us as we have to learn new ways of being. We heal to become what we are meant to be. Find a healer that can co-create a space with you that feels like your crisálida. Someone who you feel can hold that sacred, safe-enough, and you-centered, embodied space to be in your messy and muck as you become who you were meant to be with the wisdom that you already know.
