My name was gifted to me by my parents. Zena has the meaning of “beautiful” in Arabic and “revelation” in Ge’ez.
My middle name, Carlota, is the namesake of Carlota Lucumí of Cuba: a Yoruba woman who led successful rebellions against the Spanish to free enslaved peoples on the Triumviato sugar plantations in the 1800’s. Her name bestowed on me a spirit of love for collective liberation woven with a deep sense of justice.
I’ve worked in the world as a visual and theater artist, professional musician and storyteller studying folklore, mythology and performing sacred music from the African Diaspora and Latin America. It was in the world of Jungian & depth psychology that I found a sense of home and belonging at a time when the compass of my heart was broken.
I am the descendant of enslaved peoples here in the United States; an Artist, Dreamer, Queer, Neurodivergent, navigating mid-life. I am a Daughter of the Diaspora; hailing from the Salt water peoples of the Gulf Coast: Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and find my healing in bodies of water or wherever land meets sea. My family’s story is woven into the soil of Ohlone territory, where we have lived for five generations in Oakland, Berkeley and the East Bay of California.
Much like my clients, I am no stranger to the traumas that this world can bring to our doorstep: grief, violence, addiction, abuse, loss of belonging and community, feelings of unworthiness and people pleasing, spiritual turmoil, disconnection from the body, and being unsafe in the homes and relationships that were supposed to offer protection and care.
Through my own practices of dreamwork, earth tending, sacred movement and dance, art making and rituals of ancestral remembrance, I have been carving a path forward and now offer what gifts I unearthed from those inner travels to share with you. As a psychotherapist, I don’t just work from theory; I draw on lived experience as someone who has also had to find their way in the dark.
I hold a Masters degree in Counseling Psychology & Expressive Arts Therapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies and work as a Registered Associate Marriage and Family Psychotherapist, AMFT 129203. I specialize in arts-based psychotherapy, creative ritual, somatic dance & movement, and healing arts traditions of storytelling and dreamwork, as forms of medicine for anxiety, depression, trauma, codependency, grief, loss, life transitions and spiritual transformation by cultivating healing spaces for individuals and community.
I create ceremonial altars, ritual movement, music and stories as a form of medicine and healing in my own life and in service of community. My work is deeply rooted in building relationship with the non-human and imaginal realm.