Scholarships for Survivors and Other Miracles –  Jacks McNamara | Somatic Counselor

Support Scholarships for Survivors and Other Miracles

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In 2016, after much demand, I am going to begin offering community healing groups informed by somatics and social justice for survivors of trauma and other amazing people. I am deeply committed to making my work accessible to people who need it, and I am committed to working in a way that is more financially sustainable for myself, particularly as I look towards starting a family in the next couple years. After over a decade of offering my healing, activist, and educational work for free or by donation and sliding scale, I am transitioning to a model that will more reliably support me so I can be even more of a resource to my community. As part of this effort, I am raising funds for scholarships that will directly enable people with limited income to participate in my groups, classes, and somatic coaching. The first offering, an 8 week online group called Cultivating Resilience, begins on January 24th. In person groups will be following in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, as well as full-weekend workshops in other cities across the US.

Click here to find out about my first healing group in 2016!

Offering Alternatives

I intentionally practice outside the traditional mental health system, where I am able to offer truly creative, community-based healing practices without the need to diagnose and medicalize people. As an alternative practitioner and a survivor myself, I bring people a kind of service informed by personal experience and social justice analysis that is very hard to find inside the system, but this also means I am not covered by health insurance. In order for me to collaborate with more people in their wellness and self-discovery, I need some support.
I have been offering somatic coaching and wellness mentoring to individual clients since 2012, working primarily with low-income survivors, activists, and/or queer, trans, and gender-non conforming clients. I have been facilitating workshops and peer support groups on radical mental health across the US, Canada, and Europe since 2004, both with The Icarus Project and solo. I also offer empowering creative writing classes to queer and trans writers, and to folks with divergent mental health. I want to bring my compassionate witness, wealth of knowledge, and unique perspectives on healing and transformation to many more people across the world, and I am asking for your help to do this.

My fundraising goal for the first 6 months of the 2016 is $4000.

Any amount raised above this will go towards workshop and group scholarships for the second half of 2016.

  • A donation of $200 will fund a 50% scholarship for a participant in one of my community healing groups.
  • A donation of $400 will fund a 100% scholarship.
  • A donation of $1000 will allow me to offer 5 half price scholarships – half of my participants will be available to attend my course for a fee that supports them and supports me.

Thank you so much for any and all support!