Melissa Rodriguez, APPC

Whether you are a parent wanting to understand and support your child in a deeper way or you want to find the connection with parts of you that get buried under barriers of stress and fears, you are not alone. I am here to support you to deepen the capacity of presence and groundedness that leads to nurturing and fulfilling relationships. Relationship with your child, with yourself and with others around you.

My passion for supporting young children and families is long standing. Since my childhood, I was both drawn to supporting my younger siblings, caring for them while the adults were busy working, yet I never lost connection with the joy of play whatever shape and form it took to conjure up a game or a make-believe story. Speaking the language of young children requires listening with our hearts, moving with our bodies, sensing with our senses, finding the rhythm in sounds and being free to imagine a pretend world expressing all that cannot yet be formulated with words and concepts. I am here to help you bridge the world of kids and grownups and translate between the language of play or behavior and our adult concepts, ideas and hopes.

Whether you are longing to become a more content parent for your child or a more attentive caretaker of your own self, I will guide you towards deeper presence and regulation through which your own unique nurturing and guiding wisdom shines through building confidence from the inside out.

As a somatic psychotherapist and a former ICU nurse, I offer a delicate balance between listening to the wisdom of our experience in the here and now and moving towards actions that bring about the change you are longing for.

My work is grounded in relational somatics, a body-based approach. We'll explore how your and your child’s nervous system learned to survive, and how it can learn something new. I move at the pace of safety, and I listen to what lives beneath your words: breath, sensation, impulse, pattern. Together, we notice what arises in the relationship between you and your child, between you and me and we discover new ways to connect.

I bring a decolonized, embodied and trauma-informed lens to healing work and I enjoy supporting a wide diversity of clients in my practice, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, immigrant, and first-generation individuals and families.

I am a Registered Associate Professional Clinical Counselor supervised by Livia Ondi, LMFT. I hold a Master of Arts in Somatic Psychology, a Bachelors of Science in Psychology and Associate in Applied Science of Nursing.

           Phone: 602-503-2467            Email: melissa.rodriguez@mindfulcenter.org