My work as a Healer, Guide, Therapist, and Coach is to continue to create ways that help dismantle the ways we collude and participate in modern day colonial oppressive mindsets, practices, and systems.
I’m committed to this with my clients and especially in working with other Therapists, Healers, Leaders, Change Makers, Coaches, and Conscious Entrepreneurs! There's a butterfly ripple effect that happens - as I continue to learn and teach, I teach others that learn and teach, who then learn and teach others, etc. I believe this ripple effect is how we will ultimately create a new paradigm and shift away from this current unhealthy, diseased one.
My commitment to this work is not new. Doing this work of “anti-racism, anti-oppression, decolonization, and DE&I” were always part of my mission and calling, long before those names ever existed for this work. My journey of decolonization and anti-racism began when I was a young caseworker, social worker, and ultimately as a Therapist.
I rejected a lot of what I was taught in academic and clinical settings as practices to “help” people because even though I was young at the time of my “training,” I intuitively and spiritually knew that much of what was being taught stank of racist, colonial, oppressive methodologies that were not created to serve my BIPOC communities.
I’ve been actively and vocally fighting back against oppressive, racist, colonial practices in mental health agencies and the therapy world since my early twenties. My entire career I've brought this fight to the coaching arenas and other alternative modalities. Every educational, academic, certification or course space I ever sat in has required me to speak out against inequity and oppressive practices because it’s embedded in the very fiber and fabric of our pedagogy, educational systems, and consciousness.
I am not part of the latest trends. I've been in the trenches opening up minds and hearts, fortifying spirits, and living with the backlash of my calling to speak up and challenge my clinical supervisors, leaders of social service agencies, directors of mental health organizations, and all of those therapists around me that were literally creating harm while they wore their savior capes in black and brown communities.
I have been fighting for liberation my entire life. I have been speaking up my entire career because this planet, its people, and all sentient life cannot survive if we don’t dismantle and heal from this deeply pathological colonial capitalist model we are currently living in.
For those that know me, you know I’m not new to this journey. You may have been part of my previous groups or current or former clients that have participated in my work to decolonize our minds, hearts, and spirits long before the racial reckonings in 2020.
For some of you, you began this work with me last year during the Journey of Joy Retreat in Puerto Rico.
For others, I am declaring my commitment to be more vocal and more visible about the way I do this work.
Admittedly, it has felt very scary to go as big as I’m meant to go with this divinely guided work.
This year, I am calling in those that feel magnetized to be a part of truly changing the way you do your work.
To incorporate more of your full self, your authentic self, your spiritual self, your healer self, your anti-racist self, your stand against all forms of oppression self, your holistic self. I’m calling in the brave healer souls that want to co-create a new world and know that truly transforming ourselves and our world requires us to deeply HEAL, not just ourselves, but the way we do our work and run our practices and business.
Stay close by my dear ones - Therapists, Healers, Leaders, Change Makers, Coaches, and Conscious Entrepreneurs. I’ll be launching several courses and experiences to support our collective liberation.
If you’re not already on my mailing list scroll to the bottom of this page and subscribe today - I have so much more to share with you all!
Love,
Cynthia Santiago-Borbon aka Alakia, Medicine Woman
(I am claiming the full power of my initiation name as a Lucumi Priestess, and the names given to me by my Elders)
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