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The Redwood Empire Therapist Newsletter

April 2022

TABLE of CONTENTS

Register for upcoming events here!

Upcoming events

Molly Merson, LMFT
Found At Sea: Depth Psychotherapy for Unfathomed Times
Shawan Worsley, PhD, LMFT

The Justice Project presents "Antiracism through the Lens of Ava DuVernay's '13th'"

Felicia Matto-Shepard, LMFT

Modern Day Alchemy: Creativity &  Transformation

13th Movie

Peer-led Discussion Group: 13th: From Slave to Criminal with One Amendment

  • Fri., May 20th
  • 2 CEs
  • Register here
Shawan Worsley, PhD, LMFT

The Justice Project presents "How to be an Antiracist (Psychotherapist)" Discussion Group

Shawan Worsley, PhD, LMFT

Antiracism Consultation Group Demonstration

How to be an Antiracist book cover

Peer-led Discussion Group: How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

  • Fri., June 11th
  • 2 CEs
  • Register here

Law & Ethics

Barbara Griswold, LMFT

Law & Ethics: "What

should be in your notes, and probably isn't"

Law & Ethics

Barbara Griswold, LMFT

Law & Ethics: "How to Write a 10-Minute

Treatment Plan"

More RECAMFT events! 

Check out all the following events!

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Programs Committee call for presentations

The Programs Committee is calling for presentation applications to be submitted between April 1-30th, 2022. Please let interested parties know and find out more here

We also need a couple of people to help us review presentation applications. This is a lot of fun, choosing the next group of speakers for our colleagues to enjoy.  Can you help? Send your interest to therapy@recamft.org

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The Redwood Empire Therapist

Online Newsletter - April 2022

April 2022: "Found At Sea: Depth Psychotherapy for Unfathomed Times"

  • Speaker: Molly Merson, LMFT
  • Fri., April 1, 2022
  • 10 am to 12 pm, 2 CEs, Zoom
  • Free to members
  • Register here

Depth psychotherapy gives us an opportunity to contact and work with complex psychic and affective experience in the context of personal and social change. Offering imaginative space, willingness to be vulnerable, and providing “evenly hovering attention,” we can support our patients/clients in addressing harm, increasing self reflection and action, and dreaming up the kinds of new social and personal relationships each of us may need to navigate a changing climate and social fabric.

As clinicians, we can support a non-manualized, facilitated space for people’s curiosity about so many things: Who they are, what they desire, what they fear, how they have come to believe what they do about themselves and the social and material world. Depth psychotherapy can provide a frame for both therapist and client to enter into an associative reverie state where we listen on multiple registers to the patient’s unconscious material and enactments of unconscious processes, thereby opening up avenues for healing and transformation that may be hidden or repressed from the conscious mind.

Using clinical vignettes, discussion, personal experience, and weaving in queer theory, Black feminist scholarship, psychoanalytic theory, disability studies, and social theory, this course will address how depth psychotherapy is an embodied practice that has capacity to address trauma, contact psychic and affective experience, and address structures and systems which influence and shape, and are shaped by, unconscious fantasy. This course aims to support collective and interdisciplinary scholarship with discussions and questions that may help open up “potential space” for new considerations in clinical approaches that can support us as we navigate these unfathomed times.

Jelly fish

Molly Merson, LMFT is in independent practice working primarily with adults and adolescents in psychoanalysis and talk therapy. A candidate at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, Molly is active in the psychoanalytic community on several committees aimed at incorporating decolonial approaches to healing into our clinical conversations.     Return to Top. 

President's Message

By Laura Strom, PsyD, LMFT


"Emily Made My Day!"

Emily Larkin made my day by sending me a photo of the bookmark we mailed to all our members this month introducing “The Justice Project” (see below). I hope you got yours and are considering participating in what we hope will become a much larger community conversation. You can start by simply investing 1 hour and 40 minutes to watch, “13th“ on either Netflix or YouTube. Then you’ll be in the know about a very important piece of the conversations we will be having this spring about racial injustices.

Once you watch “13th“, please register for one or both of the Discussion Groups we have planned for you. Knowing how we therapists love to process, we thought groups would be an ideal way to let our members work with the material the movie presents on the 13th amendment and the surprising and unexpected outcomes it has had on Black communities.

We contracted with Dr. Shawan Worsley, PhD, LMFT, founder of Culture Ally, to lead two groups. And our Racial and Social Justice Committee Co-Chairs, Linda Block and Katharina Kienböeck, along with Emily Larkin volunteered to provide peer-led groups. This spring is a great time to deepen your understanding of racial and social justice issues and how they impact us in the therapeutic setting.

As part of my work on The Justice Project, I listened to the book Heavy by Kiese Laymon on Audible. I was so impressed that I bought a paperback copy to have, hoping one of you would ask to borrow it, so you can read it, and we can have our own little discussion group. Heavy was voted THE best book of 2018 by both the New York Times and Audible. There’s a reason…

All this reading, watching, thinking, and discussing has given me some of the most excitement I’ve had at RECAMFT! I've read more books this year than in the last several combined. I hope you will feel excited, too, once you jump in. Start by watching “13th”…

Did you get your mailing? Here is Emily Larkin's.         Return to Top.

Emily Larkin's bookmark and letter from RECAMFT.

What You Missed

By Gina Culver, LMFT


Francis Weller: An Apprenticeship with Sorrow

If you missed March 18th with Francis Weller, I hope I can convey the sacred magical nature of the day. Please look for the limited time access link coming soon to see this master at work. Not comfortable with grief and bereavement, I learned so much and the day seemed to pass in a blink of an eye. Afterwards, I felt lighter, and like sorrow I carried for decades was finally lifted.

Francis Weller shared how working with grief is an apprenticeship that leads, not to mastery, but to “ripening into an elder" and how mismanaged the process of grieving is in our culture. He wove stirring prose throughout his teaching, sharing the “fantasy of deep grief is that we’re all separate." What “underlies our work” as therapists is grief “is the solitary journey we cannot do alone.” It requires the sacred witnessing we offer to those who choose to share their journeys with us.

We ended with a very simple, but moving ritual in breakout rooms with six people. Holding a stone you shared the grief it represented with the group before placing it into a bowl of water, helping us release individual grief, and realize this was an exercise in transforming our collective grief.

The day left me a changed person.

With deep gratitude from the Programs Committee,  

Gina Culver

Francis Weller’s websites are http://wisdombridge.net  and http://francisweller.net 

Gina Culver, LMFT works at Lifeworks of Sonoma County as Program Director and also carries a small caseload of clients. Gina can be reached recamftpresidentelect@gmail.com.           Return to Top.

Thanks to our wonderful supporters!

Click each picture to be taken to the website.


CasanovaToral.com

Men Evolving Non-Violently ad

Prelicensed Member Updates

Walk & Talk Events now IN PERSON!


A circle of friends

Our 3rd Saturday morning Walk and Talks are back!

Click here to meet Jessica Heaney your Prelicensed Director at Large and learn more.

Register for the April walk here.       Return to Top.

We need you! Jobs for awesome volunteers

We need help with

  • Programs
  • Tech 1 - Listserv moderator
  • Tech 2 - Social Media Manager
  • Newsletter

Please send an email to therapy@recamft.org if you can help.         Return to Top.

Board celebrates longest running RECAMFT member

JoAnn Consiglieri on her 80th birthday!


During the board meeting on March 11, 2022, the meeting concluded with a request to honor the birthday of RECAMFT's longest running member, JoAnn Consiglieri, who is currently our CE Chair, and on our Racial and Social Justice Committee. So this picture was created to wish JoAnn a happy 80th birthday.         Return to Top.

Zoom meeting RECAMFT BOD March 2022

Racial & Social Justice Committee updates

The Racial & Social Justice Committee (RSJC) is very excited about the launch of our biggest new program - The Justice Project! Hopefully, you've all received a bookmark in your mailbox with our updated Racial and Social Justice Pledge, and a description of our newest program to raise awareness and sensitivity in our members. 

The program asks you to watch/read six media we have chosen. Two are requisites everyone must do, and the rest are titles you choose from our list. You can even see RECAMFT member Dr. Dianna Grayer's play in early April in exchange for one of the titles. Click the picture below to be taken to the Cotati play website and purchase your tickets. 

If you are one of the first 50 people to finish the prgram, and attest, you will receive FREE 6 CEs Law & Ethics this year! 

Coupled with the project are a series of discussion groups. Dr. Shawan Worsley, Phd, LMFT will lead two discussion groups. One will be on "13th" the required video of The Justice Project. The other will cover the required book, How to be an Antiracist. There will also be a peer-led discussion group on each title, too. We've also gotten an Antiracism Resource page and LGBTQ+ Resource page up on the website. 

Three people have already completed The Justice Project. Will you be next? 

Below: Dr. Dianna Grayer's play is debuting in April 2022, in Cotati.             Return to Top.

Our Lives Matter Theater Company

Our Racial and Social Justice Pledge

RECAMFT is committed to equity including addressing structural racism and systemic injustice. We endeavor to be inclusive and value individuals from all ethnicities, ages, races, sexual orientations, genders, languages, abilities, religions, citizenship statuses, and socioeconomic backgrounds into our chapter and into treatment.

We strive to advocate, educate, collaborate, and strategize for positive racial and social justice change within our membership and our community.         Return to Top.

Our Mission Statement

The purpose of RECAMFT is to promote and maintain professional competence and integrity with knowledge, innovation, compassion, humor and respect for human dignity and diversity.

We do this by providing opportunities for networking, education and community outreach.          Return to Top.

Meet your RECAMFT

Board of Directors


Click the picture to find each person online. 

Laura Strom, PsyD, LMFT

President

Laura Strom

Also served as 2015-16

state CAMFT President.


Gina Culver, LMFT

President Elect

Parliamentarian

Gina Culver


Tara D'Orazio, LMFT

Past President

Membership Chair

Tara D'Orazio


Kira Kayler, LMFT

Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

Kira Kayler


Vicky Rohrer, LMFT

Secretary

Vicky Rohrer

Also serving as a Director at Large on the CAMFT Board starting June 1, 2022.


Jessica Heaney, AMFT

Prelicensed Director at Large

Jessica Heaney


Bob Casanova, PsyD, LMFT

Director at Large

Bob Casanova

Also serving on the CAMFT Board as its Past President until May 31, 2022.

Jean Hayes, PhD, LMFT

Director at Large

Hospitality Chair

Jean Hayes


Person holding up poster with question marks.

This could be 

YOU! 

Emily Larkin, LMFT

Director at Large

Emily Larkin


Denise Safont, LMFT

Director at Large

Programs Chair

Denise Safont


Annette Seibel, LMFT

Director at Large

Annette Seibel


Reyna Seminara, LMFT

Director at Large

Ethics Roundtable Chair

Reyna Seminara


Gail Van Buuren, LMFT

Director at Large

Gail Van Buuren

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Watch "13th" to get started on The Justice Project today!         Return to Top.

13th movie

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