Context of Culture, Race, & Relationships

The work we do at Well Head Therapy is within the context of an interlocking, multilayered web of ideas. One of the braided threads running through all of these ideas is culture, race, and relationships. 

At the Well Head, we acknowledge that racial and cultural identity develop within the context of relationships which are informed by multigenerational stories, experiences, and caregiving practices. Our work together is an inquiry into what these identities and relationships have meant to you, and a harnessing of the gifts discovered through this process. 

As a white-bodied clinician often holding space for white-bodied folks, I maintain that we can’t explore themes of ancestry, culture, and wellbeing without integrating a racialized context. 

I’ve personally experienced the inner tug towards cultural appropriation as well as the fear of doing so. After holding awareness of this over the last 20 years, I’m finally learning that the simultaneous push and pull around claiming cultural practices comes from a deep hunger for something to call my own. To acknowledge that is to be with my grief that my people had access to their practices in an unbroken lineage at one time, and it was lost (made illegal, put aside for assimilation, considered ‘uncivilized’). 

My journey to learn how to call something my own led me to exploring my motherline (9 generations of English Southern Americans) and my paternal grandmother's fatherline (left Ireland for America around the Famine). While searching for the perfect rituals, recipes, prayers, and practices that helped them survive and thrive, I unexpectedly kept landing on things from my childhood. I remembered the trees, songs, animals, and quality time that helped me survive and the people that shared them with me. I realized that despite my disconnection from a cultural lineage, we had made our own meaning out of what we had. 

I want to offer a space for others to go on this journey, wherever it may lead you.

Welcome, we are filling our cups at The Well Head.