Hello my dears,

For the last four years I've made an appeal to you all to donate to The Relational Center (TRC) each #GivingTuesday. A few of you might already have a sense of how important this organization is in my life, but probably most of you don't really have a sense of what The Relational Center means to me, to my clients, to Los Angeles, or to the mental health field as a whole.

TRC is a place where people get to practice the sort of interdependent relationships that have the potential to radically transform the world. I feel so lucky to be able to practice psychotherapy in a setting that intentionally divests from the individualistic models of wellness that keep people stuck in shame and isolation. The support of supervisors and trainers at TRC gives me a rare freedom practice in ways that are congruent with my values and allows me to be in integrity and provide the highest quality of care to our lowest income community members. TRC is the ONLY place I know of in which low-income clients can receive the same quality of therapy as high-income clients do. Our months-long waiting list for sliding scale therapy is proof that what we offer is needed by the Los Angeles community. TRC doesn't just provide therapy, though, it creates and supports culture change in order to contribute to creating the conditions that support wellness.

The effect of your donation will ripple outward and sustain the wellness of changemakers like my clients who are organizers, educators, truth-tellers, care-workers, protesters, poets, and people whose vibrance, joy, creativity, playfulness, and leadership make the world a better place.

In addition to individual, intimate relationship, and family therapy, TRC provides free and low-cost groups. Here's just a sampling of the few I've been involved with to give you a taste of what we're about: Bodies and Trauma (a psychoeducation group for folks who have experienced trauma), a transmasculine peer support group, and a group on whiteness and antiracism for white and white-passing people.

tl;dr

If you...

want more people to be able to access therapy regardless of income

want more skilled anti-oppressive therapists in the mental health field (we train them!)

want to sustain the mental health of those doing community organizing and other transformative work

OR

want to make my heart feel warm and fuzzy

...then please donate whatever you can.   

Photo credit: Don Nocon