Some of the people my work resonates with most strongly
You don't have to have the words yet. Only a sense that something needs to change.
Those carrying too much+
People who have spent years holding complexity, grief, responsibility, or systemic awareness largely alone — tired in a way that rest doesn't fix, disconnected from their own knowing.
The seekers+
People asking deeper questions about identity, spirituality, ancestry, purpose, and how to live with more integrity and less fragmentation.
Those healing relational wounds+
People wanting to understand how past relationships shaped them — and how to build trust, hold limits, and love more honestly without losing themselves.
Boys and men finding new ways+
Boys and men learning to understand their emotions and move beyond shutdown, pressure, or isolation — toward tenderness, accountability, and connection without shame.
White clients seeking accountability+
White clients ready to move past guilt or numbness into embodied accountability, historical memory, and more honest, reciprocal ways of belonging.
Those shaped by systemic harm+
People whose distress cannot be separated from racism, colonization, patriarchy, migration, or religious harm. Your pain makes sense. It has a context.
Healers seeking restoration+
Healthcare providers, therapists, and caregivers navigating compassion fatigue, burnout, vicarious trauma, and moral injury — people who care deeply for others and rarely receive that care themselves.
Professionals seeking deeper alignment+
Driven, high-functioning people who sense a gap between who they are at work and who they want to be in their lives, relationships, and communities.
Organizations ready to do the work+
Teams and organizations committed to building cultures grounded in accountability, relational integrity, and liberation — moving beyond diversity statements into embodied, structural change.
"You were not just born to center your entire existence on work and labor. You were born to heal, to grow, to be of service to yourself and community, to practice, to experiment, to create, to have space, to dream, and to connect."
— Tricia Hersey
If something here resonates, you are welcome to reach out. We can begin with a brief consultation to see whether working together feels aligned.
About Sara
"I have been shaped by life in the in-between — across traditions, cultures, geographies, and ways of knowing."
Sara is a liberation-oriented associate therapist based in Oakland, where three generations of her family have lived before her. She spent the early years of her life between Arizona, New Mexico, and Oregon before returning to the Bay Area — to working-class, multiracial, multicultural, and Muslim communities where access to mental health care was extremely limited.
Existing at the borderlands of identities — white, queer, Muslim, and shaped by class — Sara's journey has required sustained reflection on belonging and marginalization. These lived crossings inform her ability to sit with complexity, dislocation, and difference with care, curiosity, and relational depth.
Before therapy
A decade in systems work.
Before becoming a therapist, Sara spent over a decade in business operations, eventually becoming Director of Operations at sustainability-focused organizations including Four Twenty Seven (acquired by Moody's). She completed an MBA in Sustainable Management at Presidio Graduate School — which gave language and structure to patterns she had long observed: the ways capitalism, neoliberalism, and white supremacy produce individual and collective suffering.
That systems-oriented training continues to inform her clinical work. She understands harm as often produced structurally, not simply intrapsychically.
Clinical formation
Community mental health roots.
Sara's clinical training has been primarily in community mental health at Family Paths in Oakland. She is currently an Associate Therapist at Doorway Therapeutic Services, where she also co-facilitates the Deconstructing Whiteness & Reclaiming Sovereignty groups. She holds both AMFT and APCC licenses.
Her path into therapy grew from the meeting point of lived experience, systemic awareness, and a lifelong commitment to individual and collective liberation.
Training & continuing education
Education
MA Counseling Psychology CIIS, San Francisco (2025)
MBA Sustainable Management Presidio Graduate School
BA Communication Portland State University
Active trainings
KAP — Polaris & Rainfall Soul Work — Dr. Eduardo Duran Trauma Resiliency Model (2026) Before We Were White Comrades Education (2026)
Selected continuing ed
Phase Oriented Trauma Treatment Linda Thai (2025)
Foundations in Somatic Abolitionism Resmaa Menakem (2023)
10-day Vipassana Retreat Spirit Rock (2022)
"Healing is a remembering and a reclamation — a return to the Self and to all that sustains us."
If you'd like to explore whether working together feels aligned, Sara offers a brief consultation call to begin.
The work
Therapy as remembrance, repair, and return.
This is not about fixing you. It is about honoring what helped you survive, understanding what shaped you, and creating more room for aliveness, choice, connection, and sovereignty. I practice in service of remembering and reconnecting to what systems of oppression have worked to sever — the living bonds between self, body, community, ancestry, land, spirit, and culture.
"My path into therapy grew from the meeting point of lived experience, systemic awareness, and a lifelong commitment to individual and collective liberation."
Somatic healing
The body as a site of memory, protection, wisdom, and repair.
Liberation psychology
Personal pain is not separate from systemic harm.
Ancestral & spiritual work
Lineage, ritual, grief, memory, and the sacred.
Attachment & relational repair
How we protect ourselves, reach for others, and trust.
Ecotherapy & land
Reconnection with the living world as part of repair.
Positionality & power
Naming how identity, history, and systems enter the room.
Fees & availability
Individual adults$180
Young people & families$225
GroupsInquire for rates
Sliding scale available. Medi-Cal through Doorway.
Location
In-person & telehealth available. Doorway Therapeutic Services 298 Grand Ave., Suite 100 Oakland, CA
First step
A free 20-minute consultation call to see whether working together feels aligned.
Services
Individual therapy
For adults and teens navigating trauma, anxiety, depression, grief, identity, burnout, spiritual longing, relational wounds, and life transitions.
Group therapy
Spaces for collective healing, accountability, and reconnection. Current and forming groups available — contact Sara for details and availability.
Family therapy
Supporting families in rebuilding communication, emotional safety, and connection — with awareness of intergenerational patterns and systemic forces.
Children & adolescents
Inviting creativity and play into the room, creating space for young people to lead in ways that feel supportive. Parents are partners in this work.
"You carry your own medicine. Healing doesn't happen because of us as therapists — it happens through us, when the relationship is safe enough for your own wisdom to emerge."
— Sara, on the work
Positionality
Ethical therapy requires ongoing attention to how identity and history enter the room.
Sara's work is shaped by her own location within systems of power, belonging, and dislocation. As a white, queer, Muslim therapist shaped by class, she brings ongoing reflection on privilege, accountability, and the responsibilities that come with her position in the therapeutic relationship.
"Values must extend far beyond a diversity statement. They must be embodied and enacted at every level — from individual clinicians to the therapeutic relationship itself."
Frequently asked
What can I expect in a first session?+
A relational, collaborative space where we move at a pace that respects your nervous system. We'll begin getting to know each other, talk about what brought you here, and explore what support might feel meaningful. Your felt sense of safety is always central.
Do I have to be spiritual or interested in ancestry?+
Not at all. These are available dimensions of the work, not requirements. Sara follows what is meaningful and supportive for you — whether you are deeply rooted, questioning, or disconnected from spiritual and cultural life.
What does liberation-oriented therapy mean?+
It means your pain is not treated as separate from the world you live in. We explore both your inner experience and the broader systems, histories, and relationships that have shaped it — without pathologizing what are often very sensible responses to harm.
Do you work with trauma?+
Yes. Sara's work is trauma-informed and attentive to how trauma lives in the body, relationships, identity, family systems, culture, and inherited histories — including complex, relational, ancestral, and historical trauma.
Do you work with white clients around whiteness?+
Yes. Sara offers dedicated space for white clients wanting to move past guilt or numbness into embodied accountability, historical memory, and more honest ways of belonging.
What are your fees and do you accept insurance?+
Individual adults $180. Young people & families $225. Groups — inquire for rates. Sliding scale available. Medi-Cal through Doorway Therapeutic Services. Please reach out directly to discuss.
"Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion."
— bell hooks
Consulting
Turning the gaze inward is part of ethical care.
Sara offers consultation, workshops, and trainings for therapists, healthcare workers, and organizations committed to developing practice rooted in mutual liberation, relational accountability, and honest engagement with power.
"Ethical therapy requires ongoing attention to how identity, history, privilege, and systems enter the room."
Turning the Gaze Inward
A liberation-oriented clinical practice.
Turning the Gaze Inward is a framework for clinical practice in which therapists examine not only the client's inner world, but also their own positionality, conditioning, and participation in systems of power. It asks clinicians to notice how whiteness, privilege, fear, guilt, and inherited clinical assumptions shape perception, assessment, intervention, and relationship.
Rather than locating the problem solely within the client, this practice widens the frame to include the therapist, the therapeutic relationship, and the historical and systemic forces moving through the room. It is both an ethical orientation and a relational practice — one that requires ongoing commitment, humility, and accountability.
"Therapy can become a site of mutual liberation and rehumanization — when we commit to the ongoing practice of remembering, for the sake of all life."
Offerings for clinicians
Support for therapists doing the deeper work.
i.
Clinical consultation
One-on-one or small group consultation for therapists wanting support with positionality, whiteness, countertransference, power, rupture and repair, and the ways systems enter the therapeutic relationship. Especially supportive for white therapists building a liberation-oriented praxis.
ii.
Workshops & trainings
Turning the Gaze Inward: Unlearning Whiteness in Clinical Practice Location of Self in Clinical Work Liberation Psychology for Therapists Reclaiming Historical Memory as Clinical Praxis
Available for groups, agencies, and training programs.
iii.
Organizational consulting
Support for healthcare organizations, clinics, and training programs seeking to integrate liberation-oriented frameworks, address institutional whiteness, and build cultures of relational accountability.
For healers
Healing the healers.
Those who care for others are rarely offered the same care themselves. Sara offers dedicated support for healthcare providers — nurses, physicians, therapists, and other care workers — navigating compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, burnout, and moral injury.
This work may include individual consultation, group process, and KAP-informed healing spaces designed specifically for those carrying the weight of caring for others.
"We heal in relationship — with self, others, ancestry, land, and the sacred."
To inquire about consultation, workshops, or organizational work, reach out directly.
Coaching
Living with more intention, integrity, and connection.
Coaching is for people who want to live more fully — not because something is broken, but because they sense a gap between who they are and who they want to be. It is a space for clarity, growth, and accountability, without the clinical framing of therapy.
This offering is particularly well-suited for Bay Area professionals who are high-functioning and driven, but want support reconnecting with purpose, values, relationships, and the parts of life that matter beyond work.
What coaching addresses
You don't have to be in crisis to want more.
Purpose & direction
Reconnecting with what matters — beyond performance, productivity, and external measures of success.
Leadership & values alignment
Building a way of leading and working that is grounded in integrity, relational accountability, and genuine care.
Life transitions
Navigating career changes, identity shifts, relationship transitions, and moments of reinvention with clarity and intention.
Burnout & sustainability
Building more sustainable ways of working and living — without sacrificing ambition or care.
Relationships & communication
Developing more honest, skillful, and connected ways of relating — at work, at home, and in community.
Identity & belonging
Exploring who you are beyond your roles — and what it means to belong to yourself, your community, and the world.
Coaching vs. therapy
Two different containers for growth.
Therapy is a clinical service focused on healing, mental health, and the deeper roots of suffering — often involving trauma, diagnosis, and psychological treatment. Coaching is forward-focused, skills-oriented, and not a clinical service. It does not diagnose or treat mental health conditions.
Some people benefit most from therapy. Others from coaching. Some from both — with different providers or sequentially. Sara will be honest with you about which might be the better fit, and can refer you if needed.
"You were not just born to center your entire existence on work and labor. You were born to heal, to grow, to be of service to yourself and community."
— Tricia Hersey
To inquire about coaching availability and rates, reach out directly.
Psychedelic Medicine
Healing that happens at the roots.
Psychedelic medicines have the potential to open powerful material — but healing depends on preparation, relationship, integration, and context. Sara's approach is trauma-informed, culturally humble, spiritually respectful, and grounded in relational safety.
"These medicines hold tremendous potential for healing — and that potential is only realized within a safe, ethical, and well-held container."
Offerings
Preparation, therapy, and integration.
KAP preparation
Individual sessions to prepare for ketamine-assisted psychotherapy — setting intentions, building safety, addressing fears, and establishing the relational container needed for meaningful work.
Integration support
Individual and group support for making meaning of psychedelic experiences — processing what arose, integrating insights, and grounding new awareness into everyday life and relationship.
Group-based KAP
Developing group KAP offerings rooted in the belief that healing happens most powerfully in community. Group work increases accessibility and allows people to witness one another and move out of isolation into connection.
Muslim Mycelium Network
A community initiative supporting awareness, dialogue, education, and harm reduction around psychedelic and integrative healing within Muslim communities — one of very few culturally safe spaces for these conversations to happen with care and nuance.
Sara's approach
Reverence, safety, and accessibility.
Psychedelic medicines have played an important role in Sara's own personal and ancestral healing. She holds deep reverence for their potential — and an equally deep commitment to ensuring these modalities do not remain accessible only to those with financial privilege.
She is actively pursuing KAP training through Polaris and Rainfall, with a focus on group-based approaches and community access — particularly for people navigating racial, cultural, religious, and economic barriers to care.
Note: Sara is currently in training. Please reach out to discuss current availability and appropriate clinical context for this work.
"The body remembers. The medicine meets us where we are."
To inquire about KAP preparation, integration support, or the Muslim Mycelium Network, reach out directly.
Healing in the more-than-human world.
Camping trips, nature immersions, and land-based healing offerings
The vision
We are not separate from the living world.
Ecotherapy and land-based healing are woven throughout Sara's clinical work — and she is developing offerings that bring this into direct practice. These immersions are rooted in the belief that reconnection with land, place, seasons, and the more-than-human world can be part of profound repair.
Drawing on her permaculture training, her experience with the Work That Reconnects, and her own deep relationship with land and water, Sara offers structured experiences that bring healing out of the office and into the wild.
"Coming home to yourself is not separate from coming back into relationship with the living world."
Offering · Small group
Camping & wilderness immersions
Multi-day small group camping trips integrating therapeutic process, somatic practice, council work, and time in nature. Held in Northern California and the Sierra Nevada.
Offering · Day & weekend
Day retreats & land-based workshops
Day and weekend retreats integrating the Work That Reconnects, council practices, somatic awareness, and ancestral reconnection — held in natural settings.
Offering · Individual & group
Walk & talk / outdoor therapy
Therapy sessions held outdoors — walking, sitting in nature, or in Oakland's parks and green spaces. For clients who feel more alive when not contained by four walls.
"The body remembers. The land remembers. So do we."
Resources
A living library, built in community.
This is a shared, curated collection of resources — articles, books, organizations, events, and tools — organized by theme. Anyone is welcome to submit a resource for consideration.
Liberation
My Grandmother's Hands
Resmaa Menakem — on racialized trauma and the body
Spirituality
Braiding Sweetgrass
Robin Wall Kimmerer — indigenous wisdom and the living world
Racial justice
Me and White Supremacy
Layla F. Saad — workbook for examining whiteness
Somatic
The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel van der Kolk — trauma and the body
Psychedelics
How to Change Your Mind
Michael Pollan — accessible introduction to psychedelic research
Have something to add? Submit a resource for consideration to be included in this library.
Personal
The world outside the clinical room.
A space for Sara's voice, images, and ongoing inquiry into ancestry, land, and belonging — separate from her clinical identity, but not separate from who she is.
Writing
Essays, field notes, and reflections
Ancestry
Lineage, heritage, and reconnection
Photos
Land, travel, and life
Reach out
If something here resonates.
Email
sara@doorwaytherapeutics.com
Phone
(657) 464-3821
Practice
Doorway Therapeutic Services 298 Grand Ave., Suite 100 Oakland, CA In-person & telehealth available
