Hey, I’m Briana.
Human Design: 3/5 Projector
Big 5: Empathetic Idealist 97% Style: Big sister/auntie energy, hype woman Zodiac: Gemini, born under a full moon of course Theme Song: “Window Seat” by Erykah Badu or “Ready or Not” by The Fugees (because Lauryn’s verse is unmatched…”I play my enemies like a game of chess” Quote: “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even if her shackles are very different from my own.”— Audre Lorde
I’m Briana, but my homies call me Bri. I’m more bell hooks than Brene Brown. I’m a Black, fat, queer, divergent, Southern, abolitionist, ecowomanist, creative, woman, single mother, and Liberation Psychology practitioner. My identities are complex and political—I tend not to fit neatly into any particular box, nor have any desire to. My work is informed not only by professional experience and training, but also my lived experience with poverty, domestic violence, eating disorder, addiction, suicide, sexual trauma, homelessness, religious trauma, and exposure to child welfare and carceral systems.
After spending over a decade working in mental health spaces that insisted on silence and neutrality about oppression and injustice, I created Revolutionary Women’s Wellness as a site for radical thought and practice, a space to restore burned out care workers and activists, and sanctuary for women of color to do the deep healing, learning, and unlearning work that liberation requires of us.
When I’m not in session, I spend most of my free time studying, researching, and gathering resources and information to bring back to my community and people who work with me. I love being outdoors with my son, reading, writing, photography, and listening to podcasts and all sorts of music.
My Experience
My work has focused on addressing violence against women and girls, the prison industrial complex, and the material conditions of Black, Indigenous, women of color and LGBTQ+ folks under oppression and colonization. I am honored and humbled to have held roles that allowed me to be in service to communities I belong to and am accountable for such as:
Community therapist for adolescent at-promise teen girls addressing school to prison pipeline, early pregnancy, abuse, human trafficking, child welfare/carceral system involvement
Medical case manager and advocate for LGBTQ folks living with HIV/AIDS and inaccessibility to basic needs
Therapist and advocate for women, LGBTQ+ folks, and families surviving domestic violence and human trafficking
Therapist and transformative justice facilitator for incarcerated and gang involved youth serving juvenile life sentences for committing violent crimes
Substance use and addictions recovery therapist
With over a decade of experience in hospitals, clinics, schools, jails and prisons, crisis centers, and community mental health, I am intimately aware of the ways burnout, compassion fatigue, grief, disillusionment, secondary traumatic stress and vicarious trauma that occurs in organizations, academia, and movement spaces.
This is not your typical therapy or coaching experience. I work from a relational, abolitionist, ecowomanist, narrative (meaning you get to tell your/your people’s story), liberation centered approach. You are the expert of your experience in the world and I am your thought partner, guide, and passenger seat hype woman. This is a space for healing, creativity, complexity, nuance, imperfection, learning and unlearning, and boldly exploring subversive, out of the box, counter-cultural ways of thinking, living, and being with ourselves and each other.
My approach is less structured, more flow. I allow you to set the pace and journey alongside you in our work together. Less telling you what to do, more inviting you to your own wisdom. I do my best work when I am able to show up fully, and I invite you to do the same.
I conduct coaching sessions by centering curiosity and connection, insightful and challenging questions, honest deconstructive conversations, and a commitment to naming the oppressive systems and dominant beliefs and norms at work in our lives, while aiming to make the most therapeutic impact in any single session.
Folks who’ve worked with me described me as nurturing, supportive, and intuitive. I have been honorably compared to Khadijah James from Living Single and “that cool auntie your mama sends you to live with after you get in trouble” by the young people I’ve worked with.
My approach
My values are deeply rooted in both the way I live my life and the way I show up to this work: anti-genocide, anti-colonial, anti-occupation, anti-oppression, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-apartheid, anti-supremacy culture. I stand against all forms hatred and oppression including but not limited to racism, sexism, ableism, sizeism, colorism, classism, caste, homophobia, transphobia, elitism, exceptionalism, and all the other beliefs, structures, and systems that keep people at the margins of society.
I believe a liberated world is possible; this is why I do this work. Free Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Haiti, Turtle Island and all violently occupied and exploited regions globally.