AC21 - C3 - White Supremacy Blind Spot Buster: Self-Compassion that Links Awareness with Action

Siemone has worked in the Infant Mental Health field for over 10 years, with a focus on Trauma Informed practices. She's worked in Chicago's Englewood area providing trauma focused therapy and support services to families throughout the community and those involved in the child welfare system. She currently works for Erikson Institute's Fussy Baby Network, providing support services to families who have concerns with their infants/toddlers. Siemone also works as a Child-Parent Psychotherapy clinician.

Nat Vikitsreth (she/her) is a dot connector, norm agitator, and lover of liberation who supports social justice curious families in their efforts to practice social justice in their parenting while re-parenting their inner child. Nat works as a decolonized, somatic, and licensed clinical psychotherapist, transgender rights community organizer, child development specialist, and host of the Come Back to Care Podcast. She founded Come Back to Care to collaborate with parents who want to transform from autopilot to decolonized, embodied, and intergenerational parenting. She believes that when parents heal their inner child and internalized oppression wounds in a community, they put fragmented pieces of themselves together to show up to both parenting and community organizing with their whole selves. Then, parents can dismantle systemic oppression and rebuild a culture that’s rooted in liberation for their future generations.

Nat is a graduate of and faculty instructor with the Erikson Institute’s Social Work and Child Development Program. She also holds another master’s degree in Infancy & Early Childhood Special Education from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Nat had the honor of speaking about decolonized mental health at the 18th World Association for Infant Mental Health in Dublin, Ireland.

In 2021, she received the Zero to Three Award for Emerging Leadership where she was nationally recognized for her innovative work at Come Back to Care. In 2023, she received the Equity Champion Award from the National Training & Technical Assistance Center for Child, Youth, & Family Mental Health. Her most recent publications include an academic article in the June 2022 Zero to Three Journal and an op-ed piece in Condé Nast’s Them.  

Outside of her clinical and psychoeducation work at Come Back to Care, Nat provides political education and mental health support to youth organizers around the stolen land of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations (Chicago). Her advocacy areas include economic justice, intergenerational healing justice, disability justice, and trans rights.