About Remi:

What Motivates Me:

Years ago as a young, closeted trans and genderqueer person looking for a therapist, I had the hardest time finding someone who had both solid clinical skills and any level of competence about queer people. While all of the therapists I tried were kind and well-meaning, they were all cisgender and had a limited understanding of the profound ways that complex trauma has shaped the queer and trans community. Ultimately, I found healing through great trauma therapy, an amazing queer community, dancing, yoga, and lots of karaoke! I was inspired to become the type of therapist who I needed back then - someone who cares deeply from a place of experience, who believes that your therapist is a part of your chosen family.

Training and Experience:

I left my first career as a teacher and got my Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in 2016 from Messiah University, specializing in working with transgender and queer clients like me. After doing my clinical internship at a transgender health clinic in Philadelphia, I worked in community mental health clinics with adults and adolescents, a safehome with trafficking survivors, and at Gender Health SF as a transgender surgery navigator. As a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC), I worked at Dimensions Clinic for Queer and Trans Youth and with the SF Department of Public Health on their Behavioral Health Crisis Response Team. Throughout this time, I also became a karaoke DJ and was completely blown away by the incredible power of music to create community and foster deep healing. To remain informed about current research and engaged with issues impacting transgender people, I am an active member of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health.

In order to effectively treat the many layers of trauma that impact the trans community, I received training and consultation in an evidence-based trauma treatment called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing through EMDRIA. I am also trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

I still put my teaching career into practice by facilitating trainings on transgender health and teaching other therapists how to write gender surgery letters that won’t get denied by insurance or further re-traumatize our community.

Fun Facts:

In my free time, I enjoy performing in drag, singing, dancing, hiking, yoga, and playing with my cats!

Values:

I am committed to transfeminist, anti-racist, and decolonial values and will be open about that in our work. While the therapy I conduct is fully remote, my practice sits on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Bay Area. As a white, non-Indigenous person occupying this land, I pay Shuumi Land Tax as a small way to support Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and their work to rematriate this land.