Founding practitioners wanted
Rooted.
A community and directory for Black therapists, counsellors and mental health practitioners in Canada and across the diaspora.
Rooted is two things at once. A place for Black practitioners to find each other, across the country and inside their own city. And, when it opens, a directory where Black clients can find a therapist who already understands them.
Nothing here is finished yet. That is the point. The people who join now are the ones who decide what this becomes.
This first sign up is for practitioners
Add your name
Join as a founding practitioner
Four questions. The fifth is optional.
Founding practitioners are the first twenty five names in the directory, and they help decide what it becomes. When the places are taken, the next people join the waiting list.
For practitioners and students. If you are looking for a therapist, the directory is on its way. Read what is coming further down.
The why
What it costs to explain yourself first.
You know the session. You say the thing about your mother, or your church, or the way your name gets handled at work, and then you stop. You back up. You explain. Twenty minutes go teaching someone the ground you are standing on, and the hour ends before you ever reach what you came in with.
It is tiring in a way that is hard to name, because on paper nothing went wrong. The therapist was kind. The therapist was qualified. You just did the work twice.
Then there is the other room. You say the thing and it lands whole. No footnotes. No careful edit before you speak. The context is already in the room, so the hour goes where it should have gone all along.
Rooted exists so that finding the second room is not luck. And so that the practitioners holding those rooms are not doing it alone.
A complete nervous system is at least two people.
Danette C. Gillespie-Otto
What we hold to
We do not heal in isolation. We heal in community.
Igwebuike says the same thing in one word. The multitude is strength, and an individual is not sufficient alone. It is why this is a community first and a directory second.
For practitioners
You are not the only one in your city.
There are Black therapists, counsellors, social workers, psychologists and students in every province in this country, and far too many of them are practising without a single peer who gets it.
A network, national and local
Find the practitioners in your province and your city, not only the ones with the loudest national profile. A therapist in Halifax and a therapist in Edmonton are not doing the same work in the same place.
Referrals that go somewhere
When a client needs something outside your scope, or your caseload is full, you should be able to send them to a name you trust rather than a search engine. Referrals move both ways here.
Peer consultation
Case consultation with people who do not need the cultural context explained before you reach the clinical question. Small groups, ongoing, across modalities and levels of experience.
Your place in the directory
When the directory opens, founding members are in it from the first day. Your specialties, your languages, your format and your fee, written the way you would want a client to read them.
A monthly circle
Peer support that follows the cycle our whole framework is built on, one theme a month. You can read what that means on our foundation page, or you can simply turn up.
Room for students
If you are still in your program or your practicum, you belong here now, not once you are registered. The people a few years ahead of you are the ones worth knowing.
Meetups in your city
Small in person gatherings wherever there are enough of us to fill a room. Dinner, a walk, a workshop. No panel, no badge, no obligation to network.
Retreats, here and abroad
Longer time away for rest and practice. Local retreats within a drive of the major cities, and international retreats in the places our people come from and return to.
Founding practitioners
Add your name
We will write to you before anything goes live.
Founding practitioners are the first twenty five names in the directory, and they help decide what it becomes. When the places are taken, the next people join the waiting list.
For clients
The directory is being built.
If you are here looking for a therapist, there is nothing for you to fill in today. The honest position is that Rooted is early, and a half built directory would waste your time.
Here is what it will be when it opens. Come back and it will be here.
- Black therapists, counsellors, social workers and psychologists in every province and territory, and practitioners working with the diaspora beyond Canada.
- Search by city, so you can find someone near you or someone who works across the country.
- Filter by what you are actually carrying. Grief, trauma, anxiety, couples, family, work, faith, identity.
- Filter by format. In person, video, phone, evenings and weekends.
- Filter by heritage, so you can ask for someone who knows what you mean without having to spell it out. Caribbean, continental, Black Canadian going back generations, Afro Latin, mixed heritage, newly arrived.
- Filter by language, including the language you argue and grieve in rather than the one you work in.
- Fees shown on the profile, before you write to anyone. Sliding scale marked where it is offered.
Where we are building
Rooted locally, reaching outward.
These are the places Rooted is being built out from. We start across Canada and we keep going, because Black practitioners and the people who need them are already everywhere. Some of these places have a handful of us. Some have almost none. If yours looks thin on this list, that is precisely why your name belongs on it.
British Columbia
Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond, Victoria, Kelowna, Nanaimo, Prince George
Alberta
Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie
Saskatchewan
Regina, Saskatoon, Prince Albert, Moose Jaw
Manitoba
Winnipeg, Brandon, Steinbach, Thompson
Ontario
Toronto, Scarborough, Brampton, Mississauga, Ajax, Pickering, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Kitchener, Waterloo, Windsor, Oshawa, Kingston, Sudbury, Thunder Bay
Quebec
Montreal, Laval, Longueuil, Gatineau, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Trois Rivieres
New Brunswick
Moncton, Fredericton, Saint John, Dieppe, Bathurst
Nova Scotia
Halifax, Dartmouth, Truro, Sydney, North Preston, New Glasgow
Prince Edward Island
Charlottetown, Summerside, Stratford
Newfoundland and Labrador
St. John's, Mount Pearl, Corner Brook, Happy Valley Goose Bay
Yukon
Whitehorse, Dawson City
Northwest Territories
Yellowknife, Hay River, Inuvik
Nunavut
Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Arviat
International
The United States, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean and across the world
Across the diaspora
We are not from one place.
Black Canada is Jamaican and Somali and Haitian and Nigerian and Trinidadian and Ethiopian and Ghanaian and Congolese and Afro Latin, and it is families who have been in Nova Scotia for more than two centuries.
A directory that treats all of that as one category is doing the same flattening we are trying to get out of. Rooted is built to hold the differences, not to smooth them over.
Your particular ground
Shared skin is not shared context. A client should be able to look for someone who knows what the church means, or what the remittance means, or what it is to be the first one born here.
Trained elsewhere, practising here
If you qualified outside Canada, you know the long road of credential recognition, supervised hours and provincial colleges. Rooted is a place to compare notes with people who have already walked it.
Connected past the border
Rooted is rooted in Canada. The community is not bounded by it. We are building toward shared training, consultation and referral with Black practitioners in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean and across the continent.
The languages we are building toward
None of these are claims yet. They are the languages we intend to hold, and each one arrives the day a practitioner who works in it puts their name down.
Igbo is marked because Igwebuike comes from it. Strength in community. It is the sentence this whole project is built on.
Working in a language that is not on this list? Put your name down and say which one, and it goes on. The list grows by practitioner, not by promise.
One more time
Be one of the first names in it.
Issa Rae said she is rooting for everybody Black. Rooted is that sentence turned into something with an address, a list of names, and a room to walk into.
Rooted will be made of the people who show up early and say what it needs to be. If you are a Black practitioner anywhere in this country, or a student on your way to becoming one, this is the moment where your voice counts most.
Put your name down. We will write to you before anything goes live, and we will ask what you want this to be before we build it.
Practitioners and students
Join as a founding practitioner
Four questions. The fifth is optional.
Founding practitioners are the first twenty five names in the directory, and they help decide what it becomes. When the places are taken, the next people join the waiting list.