My Approach.

My Approach.

A woman with long curly brown hair, wearing a black scarf with white circles, a tan patterned coat, and rings on her fingers, sitting on a log in a wooded area with fallen leaves, smiling and winking at the camera.
A Venn diagram with three overlapping circles labeled A, B, and C.
Line art illustration of two overlapping pacifiers, one on the left and one on the right.

My approach is funny, creative, informative, empathetic, and will deeply shift your relationship with self and with others.

I facilitate parenting and therapeutic support groups, writing workshops, and peer counseling courses as well as performance art intensives and one-on-on parent-mentor sessions.

My Therapeutic Approach

I specialize in working with survivors of childhood sexual abuse and other traumas.

I have witnessed and seen how healing trauma and creating a life of action and intimacy is possible for those who engage in this work.

Close-up view of small white wildflowers and green grass in a natural outdoor setting with blurred background.

Trauma education is a strong component of my work—giving clients a context for understanding how trauma manifests in the body and interrupts emotional, physical, and spiritual ease and functioning. I outline and facilitate how the healing process works in terms of tracking and integrating memory, unwinding the nervous system, and building sturdy internal and external support systems.


My Approach with Parents

I help parents transition from control-based, power-over parenting to non-coercion and collaboration.

Parents are often right on the brink of allowing more closeness and simply need a little push to trust that process.

Multiple hands of diverse skin tones holding small green plants with soil, forming a circle on soil to symbolize growth and unity.

I coach parents who are in the challenging transition from authoritarian parenting practices to an approach that is collaborative and playful. It’s a profoundly difficult change to make!

I validate parents who sense—deep inside—that control is hurting their relationship with their kids. I explain why and how control/punishment/domination/shaming/discipline causes separation. I give many ideas of things to try, ways to get underneath the old patterns from our own childhoods, and to get beyond the societal beliefs that children are manipulative. Together, we focus on empathy, play, negotiation, communication, and tracking our triggers.

  • “Rythea is amazing. This group switches gears from behavior modification to acknowledging the triggers and trauma we are projecting at our kids. In doing this it has created such connection and transparency with our kids; really allowing us to see them for who they are and what they need.”

  • “Rythea did a wonderful job balancing compassion and empathy for parents in the group, while also holding us accountable for our behavior as parents. Rythea holds the space with so much curiosity and enthusiasm, it is easy to bring more openness and joy to this intense work!”

  • “Having a group of other parents to learn and grow with as I work to improve my relationship with my child has been incredible. Rythea is warm, genuine, and a brilliant facilitator who created a safe space from the first session, with a diverse group coming from many different experiences as parents.”

“…risks that deliver you back to yourself.”