President's Message

 back to December 2024 newsletter 
by Liliana Ramos, LMFT

Today, I am writing my last message to you as president of the chapter. It has been an amazing whirlwind year with a new board. I am so grateful that I was blessed with amazing board members who were dedicated to making SCV-CAMFT a successful chapter. I look forward to holding the past-president position on the board. Thanks to all of our members for making SCV-CAMFT possible.

My journey with SCV-CAMFT started out as a volunteer while I was a student, trainee, and AMFT. When I received my license and started my private practice, I found the need to connect with other therapists. I decided to apply for the Director-at-Large position on the SCV-CAMFT board, working on the newsletter and helping with events. Then I decided to step up to becoming the president. Although it felt daunting, the amazing board that Ursula and I built became a team that was committed to making SCV-CAMFT a success.

We started the year with having to find new support group members, worried about being able to provide the same level of support for our members. The result is that our Support Group Director found amazing support group leaders for the current group and started five new support groups. The only sad part about this is that we lost our Black Therapist support group. We will always be grateful to Erica Braddock for leading this group that provided a safe space to Black therapists in our group.

Moreover, Our Director of DEI began the Cinema Therapy Club that she and her volunteer plan and share every month. It has become quite popular. In 2024, she worked with other board members to ensure that we were providing a diverse, inclusive, and equitable opportunity for our members. Our Director of Programs had quite a lineup of events for 2024 and is feverishly working on the 2025 events. Our Director of Membership spread the Coffee Talk to include the far ends of our chapter like San Mateo County. Now we have more members enjoying networking at our coffee talks. Our current treasurer re-started our sponsorship program. Look for more information in 2025. Our President at Large and Director of DEI launched the TDC scholarship and helped clinician’s with their preparation to licensure. We can’t forget our secretary who is managing to make a difference to our mental health community while running a private practice and spending time with her busy family’s sports schedule. Her documentation and contributions are valuable in capturing the history of our chapter. Last but not least is our administrator, Nancy. She is the person behind the scenes who makes the chapter run smoothly.

We also started with plunging into social media and changing the newsletter. As the year went on the social media posts and newsletter took several turns. Our Director at Large took over the newsletter in October. We finally decided on using Canva and having either a board member or volunteer create and post the material. This evolved to dividing the Director of Technology and Director of Social Media positions. Our social media volunteer decided to join the board in late October.

We are saddened to lose Vidur Malik, our Director at Large, who has taken our newsletter to a new level of a monthly publication. With him stepping down, we will go down to a quarterly newsletter because of the time commitment to create a newsletter. Thank you, Vidur. We hope that your new career endeavors bring you joy.

We are also saddened to lose Rachel Costella, our Director of Membership, who grew our coffee talk to go to the peninsula so that our members who live in San Mateo County have the opportunity to meet fellow SCV-CAMFT members without having to drive down to the South Bay. In addition, she gave us an event to remember at the annual membership event. Thank you, Rachel. We hope next year brings you joy.

At the annual membership event, we recognized our amazing volunteers and those who volunteered to be interviewed this year. The board can’t do all the things that we need to do to support the chapter without all of you. Last, but definitely not least, we would like to thank all of our chapter members. Our chapter is successful because of your membership and participation.

As we end 2024, we welcome our new board members who begin their 2-year term on January 2025. We welcome Liz Ojeda as our Director of Membership, Rosario Puga-Dempsey as our Director of Sponsorship, Brandon Hoshiko as our Director of Technology, Kassidy Butterworth as our Director of Social Media, and Gia Reyes as our Director at Large.

We are still interviewing for a Treasurer and a second Director at Large. If you want to start a new adventure, working on an amazing board that is making a difference in our community, please reach out to Ursula or I.

I believe that the 2025 board will be even a better board under Ursula Jorgensen’s leadership. As we each look at 2025, I hope that we set our goals, and wonder what the future holds. I leave you with a quote from Sarah Ban Breathnach. “Take a leap of faith and begin this wondrous new year by believing.”

 back to November 2024 newsletter 
by Liliana Ramos, LMFT

Welcome to November, the month dedicated to gratitude. It is appropriate that on this month, we hold our annual membership event where we thank all of the volunteers who make this chapter one of the most active in California. We honored our support group leaders for our 9 support groups, our cinema therapy club leaders, our newsletter committee, our social media volunteer, our administrator, our article contributors, and event volunteers. We also expressed our gratefulness for all of you. It’s you, our members, who participate in the support groups and events. Thank you!

In this newsletter you will find an interview by Vidur Malik, Director-at-Large, with Saru Sivanesan where Saru shares suggestions for how to work with our clients in the technology industry. Our Director of DEI, Kusum Punjabi, wrote an article on how different cultures honor the new moon. I wrote an article on the intersection of Native American Heritage and the Transgender identity in honor of Native American Heritage month and Transgender Remembrance Day. As usual, we are grateful to receive a poem from Edna Wallace.

The 2024 board members were passionate in accomplishing the tasks assigned to their positions. Some of them included growing their positions to include things like the cinema therapy club, monthly newsletters, region wide coffee talks, creating five new support groups, restarting the sponsorship program, and revamping the event process to be more efficient. We have increased our social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Our first year at managing the Tzedakah Project Scholarship was successful. Our President Elect and Director of DEI managed and advertised this program. We awarded 6 scholarships with the $2000 that was given by the Therapist Development Center, which can be used on TDC products like the licensing course and continuing education classes. The $2000 was distributed to 2 individuals in the $500 category, 2 in the $300 category, and 2 in the $200 category. The names are not being published since some individuals did not wish to be publicly identified. All the scholarship applications were so good that we gave the 3 runner-ups the ability to attend a free event.

In addition, we have two other programs that we have had success with; sponsorship and CAMFT L&E Share program. Our treasurer revamped the sponsorship program to help the chapter gain more funds for next year. This program has helped us replenish money that we borrowed from our savings to assist us in navigating our contracts. We also have been identified as the top chapter in CAMFT that participated in CAMFT’s L&E Share Program. This was so successful that our chapter plans to participate again next year.

What’s coming up next year? We will grow our board by three positions. We will have a Director of Sponsorship, Director of Social Media, and a Director of Technology. We are also hoping to fill our second Director-at-Large position to help manage our volunteer assignments. Our newsletter will go back to quarterly. Having a monthly newsletter has just too many hours for our volunteer board.

We want to thank two of our board members who are stepping down. Vidur Malik, our Director-at-Large, who has been interviewing newsletter contributors and managing the monthly newsletter. He has been valuable in taking our newsletter to a new level. Rachel Costella, our Director of Membership, made our Coffee Talks more accessible to all of our members and gave our members a wonderful sound healing experience at our annual membership event. We are grateful to both of them for their contributions to our membership. They will be missed.

Our chapter did all this! Thanks to all of you! SCV-CAMFT would not exist if not for all of our members.

back to October 2024 newsletter
Welcome to our October newsletter. It’s hard to believe that we are in the last quarter of the year! On October 10, we celebrated World Mental Health Day with the theme “It is Time to Prioritize Mental Health in the Workplace.” We need to address issues like workplace burnout, depression, anxiety, and grief. We have come a long way from where we were in 2020, but as we have experienced in our therapy rooms, we still have a long way to go. I’m grateful though, that we have World Mental Health Day to help everyone reflect on the importance of mental health care. I’m also grateful for all of you as you make a difference every day to ensure that mental health is a priority.

We hope that you don’t miss Dave Jensen’s presentation on Law and Ethics on October 18th. We are also announcing the open board positions, as follows - Treasurer, Director of Membership, Director of Social Media, and Director of Sponsorship. If you are interested in any of these positions, please apply. Interviews will take place before October 31st. The election ballots will be coming out for three weeks in November. We hope you decide to join the board. If you have any questions about the board, please reach out to any of us for information.

Next month, we will be celebrating you and our volunteers at Michael’s on November 16th. Our Director of Membership, Rachel Costella, has created a special event that includes a sound healing. Rachel found a spiritual coach/healer who specializes in Angelic Reiki, Sound healing, and Chakra balancing. Don’t miss out on seeing your colleagues recognized during the awards portion, hearing what the board has been doing for you, experiencing a sound bath, and networking with your colleagues.

In this newsletter, you will find an interview where Director-at-Large, Vidur Malik, speaks with Cindy Gum, an LMFT, playwright and co-facilitator of the SCV-CAMFT Licensed Therapist Support Group, about how to support older clients with the many life transitions they experience. You will also find a DEI article from Director of DEI, Kusum Punjabi, on the hidden places where mental health issues can reside, as well as a beautiful poem by our poetess and clinician, Edna Wallace.

This month is a great opportunity to take advantage of scholarships. Our chapter members can apply for a scholarship of $200, $300, or $500 credit. This is thanks to our President-Elect, Ursula Jorgensen, and Director of DEI, Kusum Punjabi. In addition, there was an email blast from CAMFT to our chapter members outlining the scholarships they are offering e for all CAMFT members.

We have also been very involved with CAMFT. Our chapter is the hosting chapter for the Fall Symposium on Friday, November 1st, to be held at the San Jose Marriott. Check the SCV-CAMFT event section to register through the CAMFT website. We also have been very active in getting members to sign up for the CAMFT Law and Ethics presentations. We have two more coming up this year; telehealth in October, and subpoenas in November.

Wishing you a great month of October, filled with new beginnings, growth, and warmth in every moment as we prepare for the holidays.

Regards,
Liliana Ramos, LMFT
SCV-CAMFT President

back to October 2024 newsletter

back to September 2024 newsletter  
We hope you had a wonderful summer! September can be a month of new beginnings with school starting, clients coming back, new clients coming in, and seasons changing.

During our production meeting for this month’s newsletter, we struggled to incorporate everything that we needed to recognize during the month of September – National Recovery Month, Suicide Prevention Month, and National Hispanic Month. You will find more articles than usual in this newsletter so that we could honor all of these special celebrations. We also included them in social media along with special days like International Literacy Day and International Day of Sign Language.

In this newsletter, you will find an interview with Mary Crocker Cook by Vidur Malik, Director at Large, to commemorate National Recovery Month, a DEI article from Kusum Punjabi in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, an article about suicide and the Hispanic community from me, and a beautiful poem by our poetess and clinician, Edna Wallace.

Three new highlights in this newsletter are the annual membership celebration, the Tzedakah Project scholarship program, and a new support group for therapists 55+ and older

You are now able to register for the annual membership celebration which is free to SCV-CAMFT members. We hope to see you at Michael’s on November 16th. Director of Membership, Rachel Costella, has arranged a day of fun-filled connecting with a delicious lunch buffet, snacks, prizes, recognition, and a sound healing experience.

Read the section on the wonderful opportunity to win a scholarship of $200, $300, or $500 credit. Ursula Jorgensen, President Elect, and Kusum Punjabi, DEI Director, have worked hard on bringing this to you

The support group for 55+ therapists is for therapists who are 55+, retired, thinking about retiring, or contemplating a mid-life transition. The mission of this support group is to provide an opportunity for personal and/or professional growth in our later years. Thanks to Alex MacKenzie, Director of Support Groups, for bringing this to our members.

Events: This month we had Kapala Asok present on mothers-in-law from the South Asian perspective. We also have Jaclyn Long coming back with a somatic IFS-Informed Yoga and Movement Mini Retreat. This is a perfect way for therapists to do some self-care in a manner that can make them better clinicians.

In October we have several big events. We have our treasurer, Amanda Cortez, and her colleague Hakikat Sahota presenting “The Intersection of Faith and Mental Health.” They presented this at the CAMFT conference and are now bringing it to us on October 11th at the Yes to Therapy facility. A special thank you to them for not charging the Chapter for the presentation or the facilities. In addition, we are bringing Dave Jensen back for the first in-person Law and Ethics workshop since the pandemic. We hope you can join us at Michael’s. We hope to see you at one or both events. Thanks to Marté Matthews, Director of Events, for bringing these rich events to our members.

Support Groups: Our support group leaders are doing a great job providing space and resources for our members. We added lots of new groups this year. The last group we added was the LGBTQ+ group. If you identify in this community or you’re an ally, please join them.

Membership: Coffee Talk was back in full swing in the northern part of our Chapter. Ursula Jorgensen hosted one in Redwood City last Saturday. It was very well attended. In October, I’ll be hosting one in San Jose. Rachel Costella, has been busy in the background making sure that these coffee talks are successful.

CAMFT: We have also been very involved with CAMFT. We are the hosting chapter for the Fall Symposium on Friday, November 1st, which will be located at the San Jose Marriott. Check the SCV-CAMFT event section to register through the CAMFT website. We also have been very active in getting members to sign up for the CAMFT Law and Ethics presentations. We have three more coming up this year; suicidal and dangerous patients in September, telehealth in October, and subpoenas in November.

Networking with other therapists is an important way to receive support. Please join us at our monthly Coffee Talks, Cinema Therapy Club, and support groups. These groups have grown in popularity.

Wishing you a peaceful and inspiring start to Fall, filled with new beginnings, growth, and warmth in every moment.

Liliana Ramos,
SCV-CAMFT President

back to September 2024 newsletter  

back to August 2024 newsletter
Happy August! Life is about to get busy in your homes and offices again, if it hasn’t already. We hope that you had a wonderful summer.

August is also busy in other ways. There are many recognition days such as International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, Internal Youth day, World Humanitarian Cay, International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, and Women’s Equality Day. It was hard to honor all of these in the newsletter, so the newsletter and social media team decided to honor them in our Social Media pages – Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

We just finished our first in-person event since last February. last Friday at Michael’s. Our Brainspotting event - held on Aug. 9 at Michael’s, with Lisa Larson was a success. We had up to 76 people attending – 30 in person and the rest online. Thanks to the hard work of Marté, Nancy, and our volunteers, Justin, Donna, Brandon, and Deepa.

Hopefully, you are reading the CAMFT newsletter. There are lots of opportunities for students, trainees, and AMFTs. This month’s CAMFT newsletter has information on the transition to the national test as well as scholarship information. The Fall Symposium and next year’s CAMFT Conference will be in San Jose. We hope you will be able to join us at the events, especially next year.

In this newsletter, you will find articles about the immigrant story of a therapist in our community, Liz Ojeda; a commemoration of National Disability Independence Month; and a poem from Edna. Although summer is a busy time, please consider attending our summer workshops: Sex therapy techniques for shame and anxiety with David Khalili, Mothers-in-law from the South Asian Perspective by Kalapana Asok, and our first in-person Law and Ethics workshop since the pandemic with Dave Jensen. The L&E workshop will be on October 18th. If you need L&E CE units before October, CAMFT has an upcoming one on September 20th. Look for the information for our annual membership meeting, which is coming soon.

Networking with other therapists is an important way to receive support. Please join us at our monthly Coffee Talks, Cinema Therapy Club, and support groups. These groups have grown in popularity.

I would like to leave you with one thought. August can be a month of new beginnings as we end Summer and start approaching Fall. It might be a good time to focus on self-care and preparation for the transition into the Fall - embrace new beginnings.

Liliana Ramos,
SCV-CAMFT President

back to August 2024 newsletter 

back to July 2024 newsletter
Hello! We hope that you are doing well and staying cool. Here we are in July - a month full of summer activities, vacations and more celebrations. We hope you enjoyed your July 4th holiday.

July is also National Disability Independence Month. This is an opportunity for us to look at our processes to ensure that we are fostering a more inclusive and compassionate therapeutic environment; as well as celebrate the lives of activists including - Malala Yousafzai and Nelson Mandela. It is also BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month.

In this newsletter, you will find articles about the immigrant story of a therapist in our community, Gia Reyes; a commemoration of National Disability Independence Month; and a poem from Edna. Although summer is a busy time, please consider attending our summer workshops: Sex therapy techniques for shame and anxiety with David Khalili, Brainspotting with Lisa Larson, Mothers-in-law from the South Asian Perspective by Kalapana Asok, and our first in-person Law and Ethics workshop since the pandemic with Dave Jensen. The L&E workshop will be on October 18th. If you need L&E CE units before October, CAMFT has an upcoming one on September 20th.

Networking with other therapists is an important way to receive support. Please join us at our monthly Coffee Talks, Cinema Therapy Club, and support groups. These groups have grown in popularity.

We want to leave you with one thought. If you love to write, please consider contributing to our newsletter. We hope that you find joy and gratitude for the rest of this July month.

back to July 2024 newsletter

back to June 2024 newsletter
Welcome to the June newsletter! June is a month of celebrations – graduations, the end-of-school year, weddings, Father’s Day and many more. We hope that also celebrate Pride Month and Juneteenth. 

In June, we also celebrate Pride Month and Juneteenth! In this month’s newsletter, we have written an extra article to ensure that we honor both important holidays. They both celebrate members of our society who have experienced a long history of inequality. For your reading pleasure and education, we have interesting articles about the LGBTQIA+ community and Pride month. I also want to acknowledge that June is Alzheimer’s Awareness month and Men’s Mental Health Awareness month. In addition World Refugee Day was on June 20^th. Plus, World Refugee Day was on June 20^th.

As we work towards inclusivity, we have been updating the website. You should have received an email that describes the steps we’ve taken in the profiles so that we can better understand who our members are in order to better serve you. We also changed the cultural focus area so that it could become a searchable field. This will allow potential to search for therapists who share a similar cultural background or area of focus. The Board’s desire is for everyone to feel a part of our chapter and to help future clients find a therapist (you) who they feel comfortable with. Thanks to Vidur Malik, Kusum Punjabi, and Nancy Orr for their help in making this happen.

Along with the idea of inclusivity, our poetess, Edna Wallace, wrote a poem about retirement that might resonate with both younger and older adults.

As we enter the summer months, we wish you the best. We hope you and your family and friends stay safe and enjoy time together. Please don’t forget to join your colleagues at events, coffee talk, and the cinema therapy club. You can also find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. We look forward to seeing you in person or online.

back to May newsletter
Hello! Welcome to May’s Newsletter! We want to say THANK YOU for being a member of CAMFT and SCV-CAMFT!

The month of May has many holidays. We had Mother’s Day on May 10th for our LatinX members and May 12 for the rest of our members. We had Cinco de Mayo on May 5th, International Day of Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia on May 17th, Vesak Buddha Day on May 23rd, and Memorial Day on May 27th. It is also Asian American Month, the Month of the Child, and Military Appreciation Month. In June, we have Father’s Day coming up. We honor all our members who celebrate any of these events. Our chapter honors all cultures.

We have some sad news. Our Black Therapist and Associate Support Group facilitator, Erika Jenkins, has to stop facilitating the group due to other obligations. We are going to miss Erika. She proposed this group to the board in 2022, and it’s been a wonderful group for Black therapists. We are so grateful to Erika for her contribution to our chapter and members.

You will also see changes on our website when you renew your membership. We have additional choices under gender for our non-binary and trans members. We also added ethnicity. These two areas will not show in your public profile. We are asking for this information so that we can better serve you as members. You can add this information to your profile now. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me via email or phone.

One important note to remember when you renew your SCV-CAMFT membership, the CAMFT bylaws require us to be members of CAMFT for our chapter membership to be valid. Please email us if you have any questions at mail@scv-camft.org.

In this newsletter, you will find the interview titled, “Kids are Superheroes” between our Director-at-Large, Vidur Malik, with Siobhan Cassidy, a child therapist and SCV-CAMFT member who shared her experience and practice with us. You will also find the work of our Director of DEI, Kusum Punjabi, who wrote an article regarding the role of family in the lives of Asian Americans.  She is also responsible for the Cinema Therapy Club.

This month our new Director of Membership, Rachel Costella, held the first Coffee Talk in San Jose. It was a very good one with 11 of us coming together. It was wonderful to see familiar and new faces. We hope to have more coffee talk events at different locations in the Bay Area.

Please check our website to see upcoming events. We have the CAMFT Law and Ethics class on June 5th for 3 CEs. There will be other CAMFT classes in September, October, and November. October, we’ll have Dave Jensen present an in-person, 6 hour law and ethics event. We also have the second part of mother’s series from Jessica Sorci and Rebecca Geshuri, Intimacy with Grief and Shame. Our Director of Programs, Marté Matthews, has lined up some great programs that focus on sex therapy techniques, Brainspotting, and South Asian Mother-In-Law relationship as well as several more topics.

We hope you have a wonderful month. We hope to see you soon at one of our events whether online or in-person.

Liliana Ramos,
SCV-CAMFT President

back to May newsletter

Back to April newsletter

back to March 2024 newsletter
Dear Colleagues,

Happy Spring! Spring is a refreshing time of year as we begin to see more sunshine, blossoming flowers, and cherry blossoms. In fact, there are many holidays around this time of year; Ramadan, Spring Equinox, Navroz, Holi, Easter, and Passover. It’s a time to celebrate new beginnings. Whichever holiday you celebrate, we wish you many blessings. 

It might be an opportunity for you to try something new like joining one of our new support groups. Have you thought about attending our new cinema therapy club? The next one will be held on March 23rd at 5 pm. It’s going to be a potluck. The theme is on women. You might also try something new by joining the board. We are still looking for the Director of Technology and Communications. There are many more opportunities to contribute to our chapter as board member, committee member, and volunteer. If you want to make a difference, just contact any of the board members.

March is also a month to celebrate women and their accomplishments. When we talk about gender equality and the many issues that women are fighting for, we can also look at the many accomplishments that women have made and continue to make for the good of our world and communities. We as therapist make a difference in people’s lives. To see the accomplishments that women have made in the field of psychology, please read the DEI column.

Something that you’ll see later on this month is a social media post on 3/31/24 on International Trans Visibility Day. It is a day that celebrates the joy, strength, and courage of individuals who identify as Trans or nonbinary. This community deserves to be recognized. They place their lives on the line just to be their true selves. We can stand next to them in support of their journey. 

We hope you enjoy this month’s newsletter with an interview with a fellow therapist, Jeremiah Knight. Also, enjoy a special poem from Edna Wallace, our local chapter poetess, who has been writing a poem for our newsletter for the past three years. The newsletter also lists upcoming events and support groups.

So, no matter what manner you celebrate Women’s month, Spring, and new beginnings, may you find joy and gratitude in your everyday life.

Liliana Ramos,
SCV-CAMFT President