Hello, I’m River.
Welcome! So, what’s Caravan Counseling, what’s my approach to therapy, and who am i?
Caravan Counseling - Psychotherapy
Several years ago, i heard a talk by a Columbia psychology professor, Andrew Solomon. In it, he related an encounter he had with someone while working in Rwanda, in which Solomon related his experience of a tribal ritual in Senegal. This is what the Rwandan person said to Solomon:
“Well, that's West Africa, and we're in East Africa, and our rituals are in some ways very different, but we do have some rituals that have something in common with what you're describing.” And he said, “But we've had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers, especially the ones who came right after the genocide.” I said, “What kind of trouble did you have?” And he said, “Well, they would do this bizarre thing. They didn't take people out in the sunshine where you begin to feel better. They didn't include drumming or music to get people's blood going. They didn't involve the whole community. They didn't externalize the depression as an invasive spirit. Instead what they did was they took people one at a time into dingy little rooms and had them talk for an hour about bad things that had happened to them.” He said, “We had to ask them to leave the country.”
This interlude in Solomon’s talk stayed with me. It grew and morphed inside me as i was getting through grad school, as i expanded my awareness of the far-reaching systemic tentacles of “progress” - its overshoots - as i started tending to my own environmental grief and that of others around me.
Philosophy & Approach
If i were to summarize my approach in one sentence, it may be: “To your own self, be true.”
Authenticity is a big part of who i am, and it is reflected in therapy.
My approach is integrative, and i hope to offer a safe, caring and authentic space in which we will work together to create the best path for your healing and thriving. Our early-life caregivers shape our relationships with ourselves and others. The goal through exploring this will be to understand how this informs the way we move in the world. In other words, this is helpful information to then work through your present-life challenges, transmute past traumas through mindfulness and gentle connection with the body, and learn to operate differently.
I use a combination of several kinds of evidence-based therapies based on your particular needs. As we work together on your goals, i will invite you to explore the patterns and fears that get in the way of connecting or reconnecting to your inner essence, power and deepest purpose. This means i will also help you explore your values and strengths, so you can inhabit them fully and rewrite your narrative. This will also sometimes imply getting more in touch with your present-moment sensory experiences. Additionally, my approach includes taking a bird’s eye view and looking at the influence or impact on your life of the socio-political and environmental contexts, past and present, including ecological grief and the impact of unrestrained capitalism, sexism and white supremacy. If that is something meaningful to you, we will also integrate your spiritual beliefs into the work we do together, as well as connect with nature and the soil that grounds us.
I hope you take this journey with me as i guide you across the desert of fears and past wounds, to an oasis where you can build your new home and embody who you were meant to be.
About Me
I identify as a cisgender, white, able-bodied gay woman of Mediterranean, working-class origin. I grew up around Marseille, a large port city in the South of France, of second-generation Italian/Sardinian and third-generation Spanish immigrants. I was the first person in my family to graduate from high school. The privilege of a free education system allowed me to earn a Masters degree in English and my first love was literary translation. I moved to the Unites States (to Portland) in my mid-twenties.
After a few years working in the food industry, the state of healthcare system here led me to want to become involved. I enrolled in a 2-year paralegal degree program, over the course of which i became an initial advocate for paid sick days in Portland and wrote an Oregon law protecting interns from discrimination. I became a paralegal at a small employment law/civil rights law firm, where i worked for 10 years serving people who had been discriminated against at work or suffered from police brutality. Over the course of these 10 years, deep internal changes, including coming out, led me to want to help people in ways deeper than my role as a paralegal allowed me, and i went back to graduate school to become a therapist. The desire to work for social justice never left.
I am a Professional Counselor Associate registered with the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists (Registration # R7041). I earned a Master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling from Lewis & Clark College, with a specialty in Addictions. Major coursework included, among many others: lifespan development; trauma & crisis counseling; diversity & social justice in counseling; substance abuse pharmacology and counseling; and group therapy, with an emphasis on the counseling of adults.
I was a graduate student therapist at the Lewis & Clark College Community Counseling Center, a graduate intern at a couple of mental health and addiction clinics in Portland and worked post- graduate school as an addiction counselor, before founding Caravan Counseling - Psychotherapy.
This growing awareness gave birth to a vision: that of doing therapy in a setting conducive to healing and relationship with nature. Not only that, but also helping alleviate the damage done to the land bearing us and being part of a community of healers of all kinds.
Caravan Counseling - Psychotherapy is located in St Johns at Green Anchors PDX, a 7-acre eco-industrial park on Cowlitz land with green and creative tendencies, just downstream of the St Johns Bridge. I came upon this magical place while i was looking for a space to build a tiny office on wheels. And i came upon it again while i was searching the internet for information on brownfields remediation. I contacted them and went to visit. It was love at first sight (and so happens to house the LOVE sign, which you may have heard about). I also fell in love with the community, all healers in myriad other ways, and we feed each other’s enthusiasm for our shared dedication to make this world a better place, no matter the outcome.
I built my tiny cabin-office by the shores of the Willamette, in St-Johns at Green Anchors and am currently seeing clients both in person (which I prefer) (as COVID safety allows) and via telehealth.
