Pain Friend - Somatic Counseling for Pain and Chronic Illness

Could you use a friend to walk side-by-side with you on the path of living with pain and grief?

Chronic illness is a multifacted and challenging experience. One must adapt to changing life circumstances, make lifestyle changes. There are so many things to juggle that managing an illness could rightly be said to be full-time job. There is grieving involved, and the process is never-ending. One must learn new ways of coping, find new sources of pleasure and joy, and often shift and transform their sense of self.

In the book Care Work, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha advocates that, just as there are birth doulas and death doulas, people coping with illness and disability need midwives of their own to guide them. Initiation into illness and/or disability can be a portal of potent transformation. That’s why I offer “Pain Friend”, individual support for grief and illness, using a somatic lens. Book a free, 30 minute consultation to explore if Pain Friend sessions are right for you.

Deconstructing Wellness

Deconstructing Wellness is a curriculum that I’ve developed for group work, and for some clients this material plays into our 1-on-1 sessions. The social model of disability views disability as constructed. In other words, it’s not our bodies and minds that our flawed. Rather, it’s our social structures, our built environment, and our systems and institutions that are flawed because of their failure to support us and include us.

I draw on my academic studies in health disparities, as well as my experience working alongside anti-racist and disability justice organizers, to support clients in contextualizing their disability experiences within the larger framework of structural racism, colonization, ableism, and other forms of oppression.

Send me an email if you are interested in scheduling a Deconstructing Wellness session for your group, organization, or event.