About Rae

Rae Swenson has been in private practice as a licensed mental health counselor since 2012 in Spokane, Washington. Swenson completed undergraduate work at Gonzaga University with a brief study at Oxford. After some travel and work overseas, she earned a Master’s in Counseling with a focus on marriage and family at Montana State University in 2008. Swenson’s initial training was in depth psychology and attachment theory. Working with Kent Hoffman, she became certified as a Circle of Security facilitator in 2010. Rae became a mother in 2011 and has two daughters. 

Over the years, Swenson’s predominant interest, both in work and her personal life, is relationship. Specifically, how can relationships give us a map for our wounds and a direction for our healing? This question has followed her into many different realms…family of origin relationships, mothering, intimate relationships, relationships with the self, and communities. During the pandemic, this question evolved in another way. Rae was deeply affected by the intense sense that even amid our isolation, the more-than-human world, our earth, was showing us that this relationship demanded tending. She began to study eco-psychology, and how industrialization has cut us off from one of the most important relationships to us all, which sustains life on every level. Over the last 3 years, Swenson attended several workshops, learning about reconnecting with Nature, the ways of ceremony, council, and the benefits not just to ourselves, but to healing our earth community.

Combining her love for people, and our healing through love for Nature and the more-than-human world has become Rae’s passionin her journey with relationship, and she is delighted to begin a new endeavor of sharing this in group contexts.