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/siwatl) Xicana. A borderlands mestiza nepantlera hecho de Nuevamexicana Norteña Xicanisma, Mexicana (Chihuahua, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas), Indigenous (Tlaxcalteca, Chichimeca-Jonaz), and Spanish Basque descent. I come to Seattle, Washington from New Mexico and a beloved-fierce Xicanx, Indo-Hispaña, Pueblo, and Mescalero Apache community. I live with invisible disability related to a chronic and progressive autoimmune illness and find lineage to and kin with disability community. My own journey of healing from complex trauma, medical and psychiatric abuse, intergenerational and historical trauma, has guided me to this work with deep intention, in deep humility, and with persistent practices that honoring the sacred space and unique relationship of healing. To show up for others, I practice the present moment and being somatically connected and expressive. I delight in simple joys while holding space to honor grieving. I cultivate and nurture reciprocation with tierra madre and the waters. I love being with community and collective generative energies and wisdoms. I engage in creative expression through writing, weaving, textile arts, collage, assemblage, photography, paper cutting, linocut, screen printing, music, and dance. Being on my own ongoing healing journey is my commitment as a healer.
I am fiercely politicized as a healer, grounded in community wisdom and ever-evolving pluralvisions and generative practices for decolonial wellness. My work is Xicanx, Indigenous, and ecology grounded healing for liberation oriented transformation. As a social justice worker and clinical activist, I view the healing journey as a birthright and ancestral continuum; practices for individuals connected to community that are sacred, messy, complex, challenging, and beautiful opening of the paths 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, the forgotten, the re-membered, the silenced, the loudness, the historical, political, economic, social, and tending to the awareness of how the systemic, colonial and oppressive contexts by which we are living in and do our healing work in - shapes our journeys. Healing does not by-pass realities, it shapes them as we hold contradiction with clarity, hope with grief, joy with rest and we meet ourselves where we are at, without judgement. A healing journey has the potential to hold us in our deepest humanity as we resist, challenge, voice up, truth tell, deconstruct, de/internalize, contextualize, imagine and dream differently. I believe in healing as our deepest and fiercest resistance to oppression, as a way to continue healing for our cultural and community thrivance that moves beyond survival and towards liberation in practices of embodied reclamation, metamorphic transformation, re-membering and (r)evolution.
I practice healing that attunes to somatic wisdom, is creative and expressive, is founded in practices of slowing, listening, and deep curiosity. I seek to offer practices that calls wounded spirit home from wandering (dis-association) and allows us to reclaim an embodied a querencia within- the space we feel into our most authentic self, the places we find sanctuary, how we are able to connect with our deeper wisdom-strengths, and gifts, and the ways we honor the survivance, radical resilience, and healing within our lineages, our ancestors, our lands, at our multiple identity intersections, and among our cultura. 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.
I specialize in supporting Xicanx, Hispañ@, Latine/x Indigenous, Native, First Nations peoples, BIPoC, and people with multiethnic, bi-racial, cross-cultural identities. I am a disability justice centered healer, coming from my own disability experiences, and being raised by intergenerational disabled caregivers, and activism in collaboration with disabled and neurodivergent peoples. As a cis-queer Xicana, I am fierce in honoring and affirming the unique journeys of 2SLGBTQIA+, nonbinary, gender fluid, gender non-conforming folks and honoring healing at the intersections of the multiple identity experiences.
I am a depathologizing clinical activist, offering decolonial, multimodal, culturally integrative, somatic and expressive centered approaches including plática/narrative/story, expressive arts, somatic experiencing, sensorimotor psychotherapy, EMDR, grounded in plural-wisdoms of xicanx, indigenous peoples, liberation psychology, community psychology and eco-psychology. See other offerings HERE
I am a licensed clinical social (justice) worker (MSW, LICSW) and Registered Expressive Arts Therapist (REAT). I am an adjunct lecturer at the University of Washington. I teach BA and MSW level social work courses. I also offer immigration evaluations, end-of-life planning, community healing for non-profit community organizations, state and county social services providers, other healers, and Seattle high schools. I have over 27 years of experience in community and care work including, working in government and non-profit social services, community supportive living and caregiving, grassroots organizing, intimate partner/interpersonal violence/abuse shelters, vulnerable adult abuse investigation, community violence prevention, supporting unhoused and sexually exploited youth services and unhoused substance using folks, mental health court, psychiatric abuse awareness, disability services, disability justice, independent living centers, co-chairing a city human rights commission, restorative justice, victim/offender mediation, intergroup dialogues facilitator, mixed race, bi-cultural and intersectional identity exploration, queer, disability, neurodivergent affirming and cultura-centered healing, abolition, anti-oppression, and racial justice practices in social justice work.
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.
