About Me

The professional stuff

I have a Master’s in Mental Health Counseling with a concentration in Contemplative Psychotherapy and Buddhist Psychology from Naropa University.

I hold a Limited Permit License in NYS.

I am a certified Indigenous Focusing-Oriented Trauma Therapy practitioner.

I received my 200-hour Registered Yoga Teacher training in Mysore, India. I am also a trained Herstory Memoir Writing Facilitator.

My work is trauma-informed, relational, and grounded in the body. I move at the pace of your nervous system, always centering your autonomy, consent, and care.

The witchy stuff

My studies have led me into natural medicines, spiritual, decolonial, Indigenous, alternative, non-Western, and somatic healing modalities.

I am a long-time meditator (17+ years) and Buddhist practitioner.

My given Buddhist name is The Embodiment of Love, later mirrored through my Human Design as a Manifesting Generator with the Right Angle Cross of the Vessel of Love.

Service is my compass, and I move through the world with a deep devotion to love and healing.

I learned in my early 20s that my great-grandmothers were the curandera and bruja of their town. This confirmed something I had felt since I was a child. Though their teachings were not passed down directly, I am re-membering their magic in the ways it comes through me.

I don’t follow typical Western psychotherapist teachings, and I don’t claim to be the expert in the room. I honor the ancestors and the unseen forces that support healing, while staying grounded in your lived experience.

The identity stuff

I am a second-generation immigrant from Quisqueya. I live with the racial complexity of coming from a colonized land. My ancestors include Taíno, African, Spanish, Turkish, and likely more.

I am queer. I am a cis woman. I am neurodivergent. I am a born and raised New Yorker.

All my life I have been a misfit, weird, in betweener (“ni de aqui, ni de alla”) highly sensitive person.

I have never been able to function at the pace of cultural norms.

I feel deeply, and I feel others deeply. What once felt like a burden has become my greatest gift. It has led me to follow the beat of my own drum and carve unconventional paths for myself.

Though challenging, these paths have brought me to a deeply rich and meaningful life.

The lived stuff

I have been reborn many times in this life.

My name itself is a name of rebirth—Rysse, like Still I Rise.

I am a mold survivor, a complex trauma survivor, and a recovering addict in 12-Step Recovery.

I self-published a poetry book called Undoingthat explores my healing journey through intergenerational trauma, heartbreak, identity, and mold contamination.

Throughout my journey, I have listened to the call from the depths of my gut, gathering my intuitions, gifts, and lived experiences.

I have called it many things before—healer, transformational coach, light being, poet, sacred space holder.

All of these names are pointing to something bigger than me.

I am on a path of liberation for all beings.