Land acknowledgment

Rainwater Counseling is located in what is now called Winston-Salem, North Carolina — on the ancestral lands of the Saura (Saw-ra), Catawba (Ka-tah-buh), Keyauwee (Ke-ya-wee), and Sissipahaw (Sis-ee-pa-ha) peoples.

Long before this place carried its current name, it was home — shaped by ceremony, kinship, trade routes, river paths, and seasonal migrations. The red clay, the Yadkin River watershed, the forests and hills all hold memory. In the language of depth psychology, we might say that land, like psyche, carries strata: layers of story, grief, resilience, rupture, and enduring presence.

This region remains home to Indigenous peoples today. Winston-Salem and the surrounding area include members and citizens of North Carolina’s recognized tribes: the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Lumbee Tribe, Coharie Tribe, Haliwa-Saponi Tribe, Meherrin Tribe, Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, Sappony Tribe, and Waccamaw Siouan Tribe, as well as the Tuscarora Nation. Indigenous presence here is not only historical — it is living.

As a depth psychotherapist, I understand healing as a movement toward truth, toward remembering, toward restored relationship. A land acknowledgment is not a conclusion but a beginning — an invitation to ongoing learning, humility, and reciprocity. It asks us to recognize that we practice, gather, and build community on storied ground.

May the work done here — in therapy, in writing, in circle — be rooted in respect for the peoples who first knew how to live in relationship with this place. May we listen carefully, walk gently, and remain accountable to the histories that shape us all.