Workshops & Intensives & Support Groups &

Workshops & Intensives & Support Groups &

As a teacher, I aim to balance empathetic facilitation with structure.  

I create a safe container through clear and honest communication, providing step-by-step tools that are accessible and empowering.

Upcoming Workshops

Past Workshops

I have led Expressive Arts workshops, Performance Art intensives, therapeutic support groups, movement-based practices, writing workshops, peer-to-peer counseling courses, and parent support groups.

  • This workshop is for people who have done peer counseling or co-counseling before. Level 2 focuses on “frozen needs,” which refers to early unmet needs that tend to unconsciously fuel our deepest relational patterns. During the 5-session workshop, we explore what frozen needs are, and create a space to have feelings and insights about them. Our focus is on discharging emotions through our body and getting the support we need to shift our blocks to closeness with other people. 



    This workshop is co-taught. Divinah and Rythea have been teaching peer counseling together since 2020 and have found that online groups are powerful and effective. They are long-time peer counselors and find this practice to be life-changing. They love sharing this with other people!

    Requirement: Please make sure you have learned and practiced peer counseling/co-counseling basics before taking this workshop and have integrated them into your healing process.



  • Peer Counseling (also known as co-counseling) is a listening/support modality that is practiced by peers to help heal, break isolation, find natural solutions to problems, and feel a sense of belonging. In this 6-session workshop, you learn the basics of holding space for each other, being heard, seen, and held with empathy. Together, we learn how to create a sustainable and enlivened space that can become a regular practice in your life. 


    This workshop is co-taught. Divinah and Rythea have been teaching peer counseling together since 2020 and have found that online groups are powerful and effective. They are long-time peer counselors and find this practice to be life-changing. They love sharing this with other people!

    Level 1 workshop is an introduction to the peer counseling/co-counseling practice and is a prerequisite to any other peer counseling workshops.

  • This 5-session creative writing group is for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. I offer this in a world where our voices are often disbelieved, suppressed, dismissed, and ignored. Here, your voice, feelings, and stories are encouraged to spill onto the page- in the company of others who are holding a sacred, creative space.  

    I support you to find your writing voice, and channel your pain and victories into art-making. Writing can be transformational when we are giving permission to say the ugly thing, to not hold back, to speak the unspeakable, to take credit, and to feel our unbroken spirits at the core of it all. 

    I have been a trauma therapist working with survivors for 28 years. I am also an artist who has found empowerment and deep healing by using creativity to heal my trauma. I am so excited to be together, to spread our wings in the presence of our collective courage. There will be guidelines and confidentiality in place, and clarity of facilitation in keeping clear time structures, sharing our work, and giving feedback. 

Testimonials

  • “Peer Counseling has felt to be a catalyst for integrating sincere ways of experiencing myself, a foundational groundwork for feeling, exploring, and articulation emotions. Accessing the wisdom of my process, a true support system (system in the way of being community and accountability and reliability and consistency). At times a cannonball to burst me open, get real and vulnerable into dissecting defense mechanisms, projections, insecurities, patterns, and stories.”
     
    Demi

  • “This community is the real deal, and this practice is sincerely life-changing. Deep listening, loving attention, and wise holding of our feelings can be in such short supply in this world; counseling and being counseled has restored something so human and so essential to my life and relationships (old and new).  Rythea and Samantha hold space with an expertise based on devoted practice and personal healing, and a humility and vulnerability based on continual learning. These classes have held me through true and incredible transformation. I bring these tools with me everywhere I go now.”
     
    Mary-Hannah

  • “I go deeper and deeper every class. Sometimes I think I’ve figured it all out about myself and then Rythea and Samantha provide some activity or nugget of wisdom during a session and I learn so much more than I could on my own. Through Peer Counseling, I’ve started to trust that I can go after my dreams, my fears, etc. because I have a network of support. It’s a complete game-changer, life changer. It’s given me a confidence in going through life, having feelings, and continuing to move forward.”
     
    Michelle

  • “Peer Counseling is a game-changer. That’s the way I most often describe my experience of this class. Being encouraged, held, and challenged to feel my feelings, and actually understand what that means has been more life-affirming and connecting then pretty much anything else I’ve been a part of.  I feel safe here and pushed and seen and I feel allowed in every way. There’s something deeply radical about creating a space that asks each person to be their most vulnerable selves and bring their full agency as well.”
     
    RL

  • “Peer Counseling has truly changed my life. I can’t think of any other practice that has transformed me so quickly. The safety, the community, the support, the love, the tools, all allowed me to go into my deepest “stuff” and being to make real, deep shifts. I am so grateful to have been able to be here and I can’t picture not having Peer Counseling in my life now that it’s here.”
     
    J. Eckard

I am passionate about the transformation of creativity.