Abigail Bocanegra is the Founder and Director of Creative Heart Therapies

(2018), where she holds positions as a bilingual/bicultural Expressive Arts

Psychotherapist and Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant. She has

extensive experience in working with diverse young children and their families in a

variety of settings (i.e., community-based mental health agencies in Oakland/San

Francisco, early learning/childcare in Spokane, and community advocacy centers/

philanthropic private sectors serving Latinx and Tribal communities). She is the

co-developer and co-author of The Integrative Cultural Healing Model, a treatment

approach intersecting Tribal Traditional Knowledge and Western-based practices to

treat trauma and foster ancestral healing for Indigenous children (0-5) and their

families. She is also the creator and author of the Family Play Group Curriculum,

designed to strengthen and support secure relationships between young children

and their parents residing at Rising Strong: a holistic, family-centered drug

treatment and housing program supporting children and their parents.

Abigail sits as faculty of the Advanced Clinical Training (ACT) Program at the Barnard

Center for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health at the University of

Washington. In this role, she provides Reflective Practice and IECMH Consultation

for Spanish-Speaking Bilingual clinicians serving young children and their families.

In her teaching, she centers relationships and principles of diversity, equity,

inclusion, and belonging in program curriculum and delivery. As an IECMH consultant, she offers educational workshops and training to community and mental health providers aligned with DEI core competencies as foundational to attachment, trauma, family systems, workforce development, and organizational systems.

In her private practice, Abigail serves as an Expressive Arts Psychotherapist, utilizing

culturally resonant arts practices serving families impacted by colonial

intergenerational trauma, racialized trauma, and discriminatory systemic

immigration policies. Her practice and consultancy are strongly influenced by her

lived experience as First Generation Mexican-American/ Chicanx. It is grounded in

Nahuatl Philosophy of In Ixtli In Yolotl - a pursuit of a life purpose, living in alignment

with wisdom in consciousness and the strength and guidance of the heart.