Current Offering:
UPDATE NOV 1 - I am currently moving to a new location. Please Contact Me directly to arrange sessions.
trying it out, mucking around, playing, mark making, messing about, noticing, witnessing, sensing and feeling our way through creative disruption, tending and slowing down towards collective care.
Let’s do art together!
Here is a FAQ about Art Therapy: ART MAKING TO KEEP GOING in FUCKED UP TIMES (by me)
NO PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE WITH ART OR THERAPY REQUIRED!
reach out if you are interested in giving it a try!
and… I am working with a pay-what-you-can model that centers access, mutual aid, reciprocity and relationships. It is available to everyone.
what I offer is rooted in a decolonizing neuroqueer affirmative practice; its creative care.
Our lived experiences of being who we are in white, capitalist, colonial, heteronormative patriarchy can show up in our bodies and our lives as anxiety, depression, grief, overwhelm, fear, guilt, rage, resentments, shut down, intrusive thoughts, self loathing, irritability, loneliness, stuckness, burnout, exhaustion, self harm, suicidal thoughts, consumption patterns… and although these symptoms are frustrating and painful and can be debilitating, they are, at their root often acts of self soothing, and survival mechanisms that our body is activating on our behalf as it tries to adapt and respond.
I believe that we can tend to these experiences by expanding our capacity to listen to, understand and communicate with our own being; our own self - in the presence of and in relationship with others.
We are collective. Our biological selves know that our chances of survival are better when we are connected to other beings (human and more than human beings like trees, soil, animals, rocks etc).
To be seen, heard and attuned to is healing for our nervous systems.
We are also complex. Our conscious day-to-day living, our labour, how we get by in the world, is only one aspect of our being. We are our biology, our dreams, our fantasies, our spiritual self, our subconscious, our intuition, our sensations, our pleasure - our magic!
Many of us, in our linear, rational, production oriented overculture, are cut off from, or out of touch with some or all of these other aspects of our experiences. Accessing them intentionally and creatively can provide us with resources and support to keep going. Accessing them in community can be additionally supportive as this aligns with cultural practices from around the world, from each of our lineages.
Session Details
60-90 min sessions
in person, online or outside (by special arrangement)
Sessions include art supplies for various art practices (any participant requested specialty supplies can be discussed and will be the cost of the participant).
Rates
$150-$175 sliding scale per 60 min session (pro-rated for longer sessions)
Pay What You Can (PWYC) options available. I have a tool we can work with if this is something you would like to explore for one or more sessions.
What is Art Therapy?
Art therapy is a psychotherapeutic practice that uses creative inquiry and expression —such as drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, and other art forms—as a way to explore emotions, process experiences, and support healing. It is based on the idea that making art can help people to explore and communicate thoughts or feelings that might be difficult to express in words.
In a therapeutic context art-making becomes a portal: a space to explore, grieve, and imagine beyond what is. Rather than focusing on artistic skill or finished products, art therapy values the process of making as a way of accessing deeper knowledge, self-understanding, and transformation. For many, it is also a tool for resistance and empowerment, offering a space to challenge dominant narratives, reclaim stories, and imagine new possibilities.
Art therapy is a practice of creative liberation from normative restrictive constructs — working to disrupt how white supremist ideologies, the gender binary, heteronormative-patriarchy, ableism, ageism, diet culture/anti-fatness, and all systems of colonialism seek to disconnect, isolate and diminish us in order to extract and generate profit.
Art is a way of remembering otherways. remembering relationships with our bodies, our stories, one another, the land and the more-than-human world. It is a way of resisting the forces that tell us we are made to work, accumulate, and spend and work some more. I believe we are magic! Everyday we are figuring out how to live in systems that were never designed for our flourishing.
Who is this for?
I believe that we are all existing under and, in our own ways, often inadvertently upholding systems of oppression, and that art is (and always has been) an avenue for resistance, remembering, reimagining and recovery. My work is divergent affirming – rooted in supporting people to find their way back to themselves not only as an act of individual healing but also as a necessary contribution to collective healing (rejecting individualism and culture of toxic wellness industry).
The folks I work with are those who may not yet found or have had access to what they need in mainstream psycho-therapy settings or other therapeutic practice spaces. People who feel or have felt excluded, gaslight, invisibilized or pathologized within their experiences with health care systems. People experiencing anxiety, depression, hopelessness, grief, overwhelm, anger/rage, self-loathing, self harm, suicidal thinking, intrusive thoughts, exhaustion… for very good reasons (read: persistent violence / polycrisis / facism / oligarchy) who are looking for a way to keep going.
My work is especially attuned to those navigating
identity, neurodivergence, gender expansiveness
anxiety, grief, rage, sadness
chronic pain/chronic health challenges, disability / changing abilities
call-in/call-out culture, conflict, accountability in relationships / teams
relationship dynamics and transitions (including separation and divorce, polyamory/ethical non monogamy/relational anarchy)
pregnancy (including planning/decision making, loss, abortion)
parenting (including co-parenting, parenting complex/divergent kids/kids experiencing multiple barriers,school anxiety / refusal, homeschooling/unschooling)
being in a fat body
aging, perimenopause, menopause
overwhelm, burnout, exhaustion, freeze (in general as well as specifically connected to employment, family roles or organizing)
the unresolvable tensions of being in relationship with a world in crisis.
I invite imperfection, unlearning and messy transformations – Art is not just a reflective process but an active portal to imagining and enacting more just and liberated ways of being.
What to expect
What I offer in sessions
Deep witnessing and listening
Resourcing through relationships (with each other, our communities, our lineages and ancestry, land, ritual and magic)
Creative inquiry and expression with a variety of materials / methods
Guided journey practices
Intentional presence and attunement
Body awareness and noticing
In-Person 1:1 sessions
Initially, you can book a 15 min appointment with me to have a chat and see my face :)
Then if you decide you would like to see me for a session, you will fill out a short intake form and book an appointment with me.
When you arrive you will check in at the front desk, and I will meet you there.
When we get to our room, there may be music playing (without lyrics) and you can decide if you want it off or on. You pick where you would like to sit.
Then we chat to get to know each other, and you tell me as much or as little about your lived experience and/ or any hopes you have for art therapy.
I will likely offer an arriving or check in practice (like a guided visualization or sensory practice or metaphor play) that you can accept or decline
We explore some possible art making ideas related to what feels interesting to you!
We do art!
When we are done with the making, we explore what the process was like for you. We then may do some journaling or poetry or more art!
We chat about what we could do next time and make a bit of a plan about the next session(s).
We laugh and sometimes we cry. We practice being together, sometimes in silence if it feels right.
Everything is inquiry and everything is optional, which means we only do what feels right in the moment.
About Sonya
Sonya (she/they) is a polydisciplinary creator whose practice is rooted in living decolonization, neuroqueer world-making, and justice-oriented mutual care.
I am a white settler of Irish, germanic bukovinian ancestry that came to live on and benefit from the unceded stolen lands of the Xwsepsum and lək̓ʷəŋən peoples by way of her peoples occupation of several First Nations lands including Kahnawá:ke (Mohawk), Anishinabek, Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) and homelands of the Métis. My practice is an emerging action of coming into right relationship with this land and the impact that my being here has on local peoples.
I consider myself a recovering benevolent. My work is deeply personal and related to my own lived experiences of struggle, grief and transformation. I am a neuroqueer solo mom to two autistic teens surviving in capitalism. I spent 23 years as an RN working in healthcare (street outreach, reproductive justice, harm reduction) where I became increasingly aware of the violence of the status quo and my role in that. Last year I gave up my registration as a nurse – but kept all my lived experience with people and relationships! I have refocused my practice towards art and am just about finished a 2 year diploma in art therapy. I work from a decolonial, intersectional framework that centers relationship and access. I am currently using a sliding scale and pay-what-you-can model rooted in mutuality and collective sustainment.
Through relational, somatic (body-based) art-making, Sonya’s work fosters personal growth, embodied political action, and a critical awareness of the interconnectivity of the personal, collective, and systemic narratives that shape us and we shape. Their practice integrates neurobiology and eco-attachment-informed approaches while challenging dominant therapeutic frameworks that reinforce settler colonial and capitalist ideologies.
Sonya is a student at Kutenai Art Therapy Institute where she is completing a 2 year post graduate diploma, a member of the Canadian Art Therapy Association, a facilitator with the Erotics of Liberation Practice Field and a care weaver member with The Liberatory Wellness Network (LWN).
Full CV can be accessed here