I'm a Latina therapist and writer who loves to talk about mental health & wellness, personal development, and writing & storytelling. Subscribe to my newsletter to be a part of my mental health corner.
"It's Treatable" and Free Event—Robot Calm!
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May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I hope that you're tending to your mental health in the best way. I've been tending to my mental health by getting massages! May has been busy with events, talks, and project deadlines for me. Which means that I've been on the computer A LOT. I have so much tension in my neck and shoulders... and even in my calves and thighs. Pretty much everywhere. Yesterday I had my 3rd weekly massage and many parts of it were painful and other parts totally relaxing. I even fell asleep during the massage yesterday. It made me realize that massages are very much akin to the mental health healing journey. Sometimes we don't realize all the pain we're carrying until something or someone presses on it. And it takes time for the tension/pain/knots to go away, and it's painful in the beginning, and recovery is still at the other end... and as my massage therapist told me, it takes consistent visits, tending to and changing habits to see long-term change. She also told me, "It's totally treatable!" So if you're finding yourself suffering, carrying pain, or just noticed some very tender and painful parts within you, I share the same message with you, "It's totally treatable." I want to share some happenings in the next few weeks and also ask for your support!
Free Community Event On Wednesday, May 20 2026 at 3pm I'll be doing a book reading / presentation of my kids book, "Robot Calm: Calming Tips from your Favorite Robots." If you'd like to donate to this event, here is an online wishlist with a few items we're hoping to get donated. The items get shipped right to us! I'll be having the kids create robot legos to take home. We're also hoping to get as many Robot Calm books donated to raffle them off, or have each child take one home. With 2-day shipping, we can get them in time for the event next week. If you or your company needs a donation letter for your taxes, please let me know and I'll get one over to you after you email me the receipt. A little about Robot Calm: Robot Calm is a children's coloring and activity book where kids meet a crew of robot friends — each one carrying a different strategy for calming the body when big emotions show up. From breathing techniques to grounding practices, each robot makes evidence-based tools feel approachable, even fun. But it goes deeper than coping tips. The book gently normalizes the idea that every nervous system is different — that the way you calm down might not look like the way someone else does, and that's not just okay, it's actually the point. Kids (and their caregivers) walk away with a personalized coping plan, language for their feelings, and the quiet confidence that they have what it takes to find their way back to calm. Sign up for the in-person reading here: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/g/mt7CZyywzi Resources for Your Journey The recording of Raices Y Recuerdos that Beatriz and I had last week is now available here! It's a pay-what-you-can model starting at $5. It was important for me to make it accessible to everyone. I would love it if you shared the info page with anyone you know might benefit from listening to it. The checkout page also allows you to gift this webinar to someone as long as you have their email address. We're so close to putting the finishing touches on the book, "Stand Up, Speak Up and Heal: Overcome Race Based Traumatic Stress, Self-Advocate and Stay Grounded." We're waiting on a few DBT content permissions. If all goes according to plan, it goes to printing at the end of July/August and by November, it'll be available to the world. Reflections? Writing a book is hard and it entails so many moving pieces. And it can 100% impact your mental health. It did mine. It brought up old negative thoughts, future fears, and even some scary dreams and sleepless nights. But it also anchored me into my knowingness, authority on what I know, and oped me up to the awareness of what I still don't know, and because of it, creates bias in me. It also made me realize that I HATE editing and there's a special place in heaven for editors. An Offering I'm in my EMDR Consultant Era and loving it. I have three consultation groups going and I couldn't be more thrilled. It allows me to teach trauma informed care while centering (because as bell hooks would say, "by bringing them to the center, we pull them away from the margins") the BIPOC trauma experience. Two of my groups are full, however, there is room in my 2 hr EMDR Refresher/Consultation Group - open to anyone looking to brush up on EMDR concepts. For June, the first hour will be on Phase 5: Installation of Positive Cognitions and making the case for Neutral statements (helps with self-hatred and deeply rooted shame). I'll also be sharing child/teen adaptations and including worksheets I've created. So if you've had trouble helping your clients with this phase, join us.
Mending Roots Coping Guides Spotlight It's graduation season, so I want to spotlight two on my blank notebooks. La Graduada and Social Worker: Changing Lives are notebooks I frequently gift to graduates of MSW programs. But any graduation will do for the Graduada notebook and any social worker would be happy to have the Social Worker Notebook, especially because each page has a self-care reminder for them. Necessary for all social workers. What I'm watching & listening to lately New newsletter segment! To be honest, it's an old segment that I always delete because I don't want to make this email too long. But I just had a few days of downtime and my favorite way to checkout is to dive into art... and movies, shows, music is art that helps us heal and distract, which is also needed sometimes. So, here are the top 2 shows I've been watching:
Do you recommend a show for me? E-mail be back with your recommendations. After the Robot Calm reading event, I'll be taking June to recover and planning time off in July. I'll need good shows, I mean art to dive into. Take care amiguis and I hope that your nervous system feels cared for and safer more and more this month and beyond. |
Hi! I'm a Sofia.
I'm a Latina therapist and writer who loves to talk about mental health & wellness, personal development, and writing & storytelling. Subscribe to my newsletter to be a part of my mental health corner.
So many of us are sitting with clients who carry racism in their bodies. There's the client who stopped sleeping after the raids started in her neighborhood. There's the one who smiles through every meeting at work and then comes to session unable to say why he's so tired. Or like my neighbor's compadre, the one who is undocumented and is no longer able to do meet ups for pizza in the neighborhood -- for fear that he might get deported. Most of our training never gave us language for this,...
Hello Summer, Hello Sunshine! I'm super excited to share with you all the book cover for our book. Stand Up, Speak Up and Heal: Overcome Race-Based Traumatic Stress, Self-Advocate and Stay Grounded is a book written by three women of color, myself Sofia Mendoza, LCSW, Dr. Lisa Bolden @drlisabolden and Dr. Lizbeth Gaona, LCSW @drlizbethgaona. Together, we anchored onto the liberation and DBT and somatic practices that have helped guide us in our work with helping BIPOC clients heal from...
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