I’m Grace, founder of The Rooted Institute. My work sits at the intersection of pelvic healing, trauma, and embodiment—shaped by both my professional training and my lived experience of growing up in a body marked by pelvic pain.

My early experiences with chronic pain, digestive distress, and nervous system holding led me to understand how deeply physical symptoms, trauma, and relational wounds are intertwined. While I was originally trained within a Western Physical Therapy model, I’ve since transitioned into a somatic, nervous system–led approach. That shift came from both my personal healing and clinical experience—recognizing that the body cannot be separated from emotion, memory, identity, and lived experience. My work now centers whole-body consent, attunement, and supporting the body’s innate capacity to heal when it feels safe enough to do so.

My own healing journey has also involved unlearning internalized systems of harm, including White-Narcissism, Colonialism, Capitalism, Christian Nationalism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Ableism, and Patriarchy. This ongoing process of deconstruction and liberation is deeply informed by the work of Black, Indigenous, Asian, Disabled, and Immigrant artists and activists, as well as by the natural world. The trees are my eldest teachers, and much of my work is guided through relationship with nature. My commitment is oriented toward collective healing that centers those most impacted by oppression, while also holding my own lineage—as a child of second-generation Italian and Irish immigrants—with responsibility, nuance, and a focus on harm reduction, repair, and accountability.

My work is further informed by training in trauma-specific and somatic modalities, including Compassionate Inquiry®, Somatic Experiencing®, Psychedelic Somatic Institute®, Finding Solid Ground®, and InnerEthics®. These frameworks support the way I hold space: with care, consent, and deep respect for each person’s unique nervous system and lived experience.

Some of my identifiers include: non-binary (they/them), queer, Autistic, ADHD, orphan, and an endometriosis warrior. I’m happily partnered, share my home with our dog and cat, love ocean swimming and hiking, and continue to learn from grief, rage, joy, and play.

My work is about coming home to the body.

I believe the pelvis holds deep wisdom—connecting us to ourselves, to the earth, and to one another. Pain, grief, and rage are not problems to fix, but intelligent, protective responses to violence, rupture, abandonment, domination, and boundary crossings. When we listen to these signals rather than pathologize them, the body begins to reorganize toward safety and connection.

Healing is both personal and collective. My work engages the decolonizing process of reclaiming pelvic sovereignty while naming how white body narcissism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, patriarchy, capitalism, binaries, colonialism, r*pe and purity culture, and religious control shape our bodies and beliefs. Much of my learning and unlearning has been guided by the teachings, art, and labor of Black, Asian, Brown, Queer, Disabled, and Indigenous folx, whose wisdom informs my understanding of healing as relational and interconnected.

I am committed to offering a corrective experience—one rooted in consent, reciprocity, and relationship rather than fixing or directing. I can only accompany others to depths I have first encountered and worked with in my own system, which is why my own healing remains an ongoing priority.

As Fannie Lou Hamer said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” This work is one way I respond to that call—by supporting embodied healing as part of our collective liberation.