Your specialties are special

Reader,

A quick update on what I've been up to:

💻 A mini course on how to better understand your and your clients' intersectionality using this wheel of power and privilege.
This mini course is looking amazing!! Newsletter readers will find out first when it's released.

Let’s talk about specialties.

How many times have you minimized your own: told yourself they weren’t that special,

felt imposter syndrome creep in,

overperformed just to prove you’re enough,

while secretly feeling like you’re still underperforming?

Yeah. That’s not personal failure.

That’s systemic oppression talking.

(actually systemic oppression + a nervous system struggling to regulate due to… the world)

That’s what happens when our minoritized identities as therapists, healers, and space holders are devalued, dismissed, or tokenized.

Recently, I was talking with a clinician about the mess Medicaid is in right now in parts of our state (and how it’s been impacting clinicians and clients alike)… (and if you don’t live in the US: Medicaid is the state insurance, supposedly supporting low income individuals who usually have multilayered challenges + fewer to very little resources). We started brainstorming other income streams, which meant naming and leaning into our specialties.

And here’s the truth:

✨ Putting yourself out there is vulnerable.

✨ Asking for help is vulnerable.

✨ Naming what makes you powerful is vulnerable.

But vulnerability doesn’t make you weak, it makes you a model.

When you share your specialties openly, you’re showing other providers what it looks like to reject invisibility. When you ask your community for help during financial stress, you’re refusing the lie that we must survive in isolation.

And here’s the decolonial truth:

You are not to blame for doubting your gifts.

The real culprit is a system that told you therapy and healing only counts when it’s generic, certified, standardized, billable, and stripped of your lived experience.

The antidote?

🌱 To reclaim what makes you you.

🌱 To center your specialties, even when the system calls them “too niche” or “not evidence-based.”

🌱 To remember that liberation isn’t about being palatable—it’s about being whole.

Your specialties are not liabilities.

They’re medicine.

⭐️ Reflection Prompts

Where have I been minimizing my specialties and why?
How has systemic oppression shaped the way I see the value of my work?
What would it feel like to ask my community for help, instead of grinding alone?
How can I model vulnerability for others (providers and clients) by naming and owning my gifts?

🔥 Hit reply and share your reflections with me, I want to know what's happening in your world!

Here's to embodying our medicine,

In solidarity,

Silvana @ Decolonize Your Practice

PS. If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, you can subscribe here.

PPS. And forward this email to a peer as well!

PPPS. You can read previous Liberatory Letters here.