Our Shared Stance on Transformative Practice and Anti-oppression
At Second Growth Counseling, we are a collective of counselors, educators, activists, supervisors, community members, allies, and creatives, all with an active commitment to practicing and examining our work through a transformative justice lens. We share a love for therapy oriented towards empowerment and liberation. We center the lived experiences, cultural knowledge, wisdom, curiosities and intuitions that are present in our clients, communities, and our own embodiment. We see and elevate nondominant identities as unique sources of joy, power, and freedom.
We center the lived experiences, cultural knowledge, wisdom, curiosities and intuitions that are present in our clients, communities, and our own embodiment.
All of us at Second Growth understand that white supremacy heteropatriarchy has had a history of dominance on the foundation of our field, where it has influenced every aspect of mental health practice, from theory to intervention. We recognize that even while being a helping profession and tethered to the larger healthcare network, the counseling field is responsible for critique in causing harm by inequitable systems that have, at times, exacerbated symptoms. We will continue to hold ourselves aware and accountable for this impact. We are grateful for the many mentors and colleagues who have paved the way for change towards an inclusive and liberatory approach to therapy. We are inspired and compelled to continue advancing in trauma-informed and culturally-affirming strategies.
At Second Growth, we each practice from our own authentic approaches and share a commitment to de-center the pervasiveness of white heteropatriarchy in the tools, language, and practices used. We each bring the knowledge and liberation that comes from our own struggles while engaging actively in learning with and from allied communities with struggles different than our own. Our engagement with anti-racism learning is active, ongoing, and explicit. We hope this for you, too. Wherever you find yourself in the journey of understanding your place in the world, through the seen and unseen ways you hold experience, oppression, and power, we are committed to doing the work of transformation and liberation together.
We make transparent our acknowledgment that therapy has not traditionally been “for everyone”, with ideas of illness and wellness, normal or abnormal, that do not offer equal nor adequate care and understanding for all people and their struggles. Whenever relevant, we will name the impact and harms of this history in our work. At Second Growth, we extend a resolve to our larger community of colleagues and clients that our work shall be steered by a transformative, inclusive, and liberatory spirit driving us forward and toward one another.