Introducing Sol & Ser

Wellness.

I founded Sol & Ser on a belief: that wellness should be accessible to everyone, especially those in our community and others who have historically felt unrepresented in the general narrative of wellness. My continued mission is to demonstrate that connection is possible, and that vulnerability, when used appropriately, is a strength.

I want to show that practicing softness and compassion is an achievable path, particularly when we choose to start that journey for ourselves. By cultivating a safe, grounded, and trusting environment, I believe my clients can discover that wellness is possible for them too. I welcome those who are curious, creative, and open to trying something new.

Community

Community.
Below are two main things that I noticed when meeting with clients and what their experience had been in prior therapeutic settings. Noticing a bit of a theme, I began to get curious around why this might be happening and if I could create some change around it. 

The first, being that clients had mentioned having been matched with a therapist outside of their culture or how they identified. This made them feel not fully seen or understood at times when attempting to explain why they were more inclined to do certain things or feel a certain sense of responsibility or attachment regarding topics of discussion. Clients had also mentioned feeling as though the therapist was the expert in the room and therefore responsible for calling the shots. Once, a client told me that one of their providers had mentioned that their job was to “push them to their limit” in doing trauma work in order to uncover and heal their wounds at a quicker speed. You can imagine the fear and confusion that came from this situation. 

Another topic of conversation that I would often hear about was that of clients struggling to find someone in-network with whom they felt comfortable enough to grow an enriching therapeutic relationship with. They would often experience “symptom management care” from providers. Meaning, they were being asked the basic questions around their overall wellbeing but felt that their provider wouldn’t follow up on some of the deeper topics such as their family of origin’s impact on their dating life, their sexual health, their fantasies, their urges, or their way of managing stressors that perhaps wouldn’t be found in a “drop down box” in a questionnaire. As a professional, it’s not only our job to meet our clients where they are at but also to be a secure open space in which they can freely share their deeper inner world in a way that allows them to feel safe, free, and with a sense of ease. 

Insights and Next Steps

Insights and Next Steps.
In looking at some of the data around the Latine population and mental health, the numbers display significant disparities in treatment access. According to the Department of Health Care Services, Latine people make up about 40% of California’s population and nearly 50% of Medi-Cal beneficiaries, making them the largest demographic group in the state.

Nearly half (45%) of all Latine adults who felt they needed mental health services experienced unmet needs for mental health care. That unmet need ranged from 38% among South Americans to 56% among Puerto Ricans. In another measure of mental health need, 6 out of 10 of all Latine adults with serious or moderate psychological distress had unmet needs for mental health care. -UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, 2021. 

The Latine/ BIPOC community has been deeply impacted by the surge of ICE raids over the past couple of years. With having access to the footage of raids whether via the news, social media or out in the community, witnessing the violence has been a reminder of the ongoing racial discrimination, generational trauma and economic hardship that has been experienced. Based on the Department of Health Care Services, Latine Californians have lower utilization of mental health services relative to the rest of the population — reflecting barriers such as access, language, cultural stigma, and provider shortages. 

So how do we move forward? How do we move towards a healthier life our previous generations worked so hard to ensure we would have? We begin with something that we do well as a community: storytelling and closeness. We begin to have conversations around what it means to want more ease, more slow days and pockets of rest. We talk openly about noticing the signs (restlessness, changes in sleep or appetite, feeling overall tense or uneasy to name a few) and we explore what it might look like to access care. There are several resources available to all of us to begin getting the care we absolutely deserve. For us to continue to grow, we must allow our roots to spread and our foundations to firm.