🌿 From Spring’s Seeds to Fall’s Harvest: Rooted in Collective Care
This year has been one of expansion and deep tending — to community, to the Land, and to our collective emotional well-being. From the Salton Sea to Los Angeles and beyond, Rooted in Nature Therapy (RINT) held bilingual, ecotherapy-inspired spaces for restoration and connection.
Our in-person gatherings blossomed across Southern California, while virtual offerings — including collaborations with Justice Outside and Latinx Therapy’s Rapid Response Network — reached community builders and organizers nationwide.
🌸 Spring 2025 — Seeding Connection & Collaboration
Spring opened with a focus on climate wellness, ecological storytelling, and collective care. On May 10th, RINT facilitated Tending the Emotional Landscape: Climate Anxiety + Climate Optimism at Big Morongo Canyon Preserve, as part of the Salton Sea Leadership Program — a second collaboration with Audubon, extending our relationship beyond Los Angeles to the Salton Sea region.
This offering was co-facilitated by Sana Ahmed, M.S.Ed and Priscilla Torres, weaving their unique expertise and community roots into the experience. The Salton Sea Leadership Program brought together local birders, environmental advocates, and community leaders eager to deepen connection to the region’s transforming ecosystem.
Together, our facilitation team guided participants through reflection, sensory grounding, and creative action as we explored emotions like eco-grief and hope while witnessing the evolving Salton Sea environment. Through storytelling, hands-on activities, and collective dialogue, we honored our emotions, shared restorative practices, and imagined hopeful futures for ourselves and the Land.
Later that month, RINT was invited for the second year in a row to participate in Roots in Motion: Bike, Hike, and Walk for Wellness — marking our first tabling experience of 2025.
Hosted by the Roots in Motion Coalition, this two-part community event was designed to nurture well-being through movement, nature, and collective care. At the Resilience Fair, free plant-based meals, youth art activities, healing workshops, and community resources from partner organizations — including RINT — created an inclusive space for community to connect.
RINT’s tabling experience was co-hosted with Yesenia Bautista — writer and artistic curator — whose creative energy added a personal and artistic dimension to the space.
Our presence at the fair was more than a table — it was an opportunity to connect through art, offer moments of rest, and introduce ecotherapy as a pathway toward communal wellness. This experience also cultivated new collaborations, including with the Audubon Society – Los Angeles Chapter, who later offered space for RINT’s Fall Walk & Talks at the Audubon Center at Debs Park.
What began as participation in a wellness fair evolved into deeper collaboration — a reflection of how care, when shared, continues to ripple outward.
☀️ Summer 2025 — Nourishing Collective Care
As summer unfolded, RINT continued to nurture spaces of reflection, sustainability, and care for those holding space for others — particularly amidst a time of heightened community distress and collective trauma.
During this period, Los Angeles and surrounding counties were experiencing intensified ICE raids, creating fear and trauma among families, organizers, and service providers. Many community members navigated uncertainty, grief, and the emotional toll of witnessing ongoing displacement and systemic harm. RINT responded by creating restorative spaces for those directly impacted and those providing frontline support.
On July 16th, RINT hosted a Lunch & Learn on Mental Health + Collective Care with Justice Outside — a full-circle moment following Jenny’s time as a Rising Leaders Fellow within their programs. Returning as a facilitator was deeply meaningful — an opportunity to pour back into a community that helped shape her leadership and ecological justice lens.
The session centered psychological first aid, nature-based reflection, and collective care, inviting staff and community partners to pause, ground, and reconnect to purpose as they continue advancing outdoor equity and environmental justice.
From July 17th through September 4th, RINT facilitated Support Groups for Rapid Response Network Volunteers, made possible through the generous support from Latinx Therapy — led by Adriana Alejandre. These groups supported volunteers providing urgent assistance during ICE raids and immigration crises while holding full-time roles as nonprofit leaders and organizers.
These sessions centered the emotional well-being of those often tending to others — addressing burnout, boundary-setting, and nervous-system regulation. Together, participants explored:
Balancing community service, self-care and collective sustainability
Processing anger and staying grounded in purpose
Recognizing “fight mode” and reclaiming rest
Reconnecting with somatic awareness
Remembering joy as resistance
In partnership with Dr. Sandra Espinoza and the Immigrant Care Circle, RINT also offered Pro Bono 1:1 Mental Health Support during August and September — extending individualized care to those directly impacted by the ICE raids in Los Angeles and Ventura County.
🍂 Fall 2025 — Continuing the Cycle
As the seasons turned, the seeds of connection planted in spring and summer blossomed into new opportunities for collective care.
With the support and encouragement of Audubon LA, RINT launched Walk & Talk sessions at Ernest E. Debs Regional Park in Montecito Heights. These bilingual sessions invite participants to slow down, move gently through nature, and reconnect with their inner landscapes.
Amidst a season marked by community fear and disconnection — including heightened ICE activity in Los Angeles — Walk and Talks offerings leverage the accessibility of public lands to create safe, supportive spaces for reflection and restoration.
The Walk & Talks continue to embody RINT’s mission: to make mental health care accessible, culturally attuned, and grounded in the rhythms of the natural world.
🌻 Rooted Reflections
From the desert to the city — and through virtual rooms nationwide — this year reminded us that restoration is both personal and collective. Each workshop, gathering, and walk carried forward the same truth: healing is relational, “rest is resistance,” and care is an act of hope.
As we move into the next season, Rooted in Nature Therapy continues to build relationships grounded in representation and humanity — for the care of People + Planet.
🌿 Together, we nurture with Nature.
