In the last few weeks, fears of #AfricanGangs have resurfaced in popular media with the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull saying that there is “a real concern about Sudanese gangs,” in Victoria. In January, immigration minister Peter Dutton said that Melbournians were too “afraid to go to restaurants due to their fear of African gangs.” The sensationalised news coverage on the …
According to my mother, when I was born my paternal grandmother named me Gatwiri. In my mother tongue, Kimeru, Gutwira literally translates to “cutting grass (or thara, as we call it) to feed the cows or the goats”. My mother, on the other hand, named me Kathomi, which translates to “the educated one” or “the one …
Recently, my partner randomly told me how much he felt “transformed” by our relationship. I was curious but not really surprised by his reflection because in a way, I felt that way too.What followed was a long and vulnerable conversation about our evolving personal values and how feminism had shaped the way we did the relationship. Feminism …
Today we woke up to yet more disappointing, racist imagery of Serena Williams. It was like looking straight into a magazine from the deep South in the 1950s. In this toon, published in the Herald Sun, Mark Knight’s caricature of Williams portrays one of the greatest athletes of our times as a tantrum-throwing child who is …
In response to the global impact of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, many non-Black people are committing to learning and educating themselves and their children about racism. As Motherly says, ‘parents want to raise good humans’, and ‘part of the process of raising good human beings is finding a way to navigate difficult – even painful – topics …
The topic of racial microaggressions is probably one that I get asked about the most in my line of work and in conversations with Black people and people of colour. I receive numerous stories of seemingly harmless interactions that leave people feeling exhausted, confused, slighted or disrespected. These experiences range from compliments that express surprise …
I have an interdisciplinary PhD in Social Work & Cultural Studies awarded by Flinders University of (Adelaide), a Masters degree in Counselling & Psychotherapy from Cairnmillar Institute (Melbourne) and a Bachelor of Social Work with First class honours. I am currently a registered Psychotherapist, with the Psychotherapists and Counsellors Federation of Australia and a senior academic at an Australian University.
I am an award-winning researcher with an established reputation for distinctive contribution in research in the field of race, identity and trauma. I am one of the leading African-Australian academic experts on the topics of race, racial trauma, racial fatigue, racial microagressions and African migranthood in Australia.
As a therapist, I deploy Afrocentric and decolonised approaches to therapy which utilise story telling as a way of identifying patterns of maladaptive coping mechanisms and trauma imprints. I don’t provide clinical diagnostic frameworks, rather, I am guided by principles of Afrocentricity, Ubuntu and trauma informed approaches, to dig safely into the stories my clients embody and support them to re-re-develop heathier and more dignified narratives for and about themselves. My practice is supervised by two clinicians. Both have over 40 years of practice experience combined.