Hey there. I’m Julia Alexander.

By the time I was 16, I had made a choice to learn more about racism. I lived in a community that aimed to be inclusive, but that practiced colorblindness. This was commonplace in the 90's. I think it was the very contradictions in colorblindness – what I was told was vastly different from what I observed and felt – that ultimately sparked my need to better understand race and racism. When I graduated from high school, my mom gave me a book by Dr. Beverly Tatum, (Thanks, Mom), which was the first place I read the words “white privilege.” I initially railed against the concept defensively, because my interest in race and racism was just that – an interest in someone else, removed and disconnected from myself.  

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In college, understanding the construction of whiteness and racism became my focus. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on colorblind racism and became passionate about finding the most effective ways to create paradigm shifts for people who hold multiple privileged identities. People like me.

I pursued a master's degree in social justice education, which provided me with an even deeper understanding of the historical, social, political, racial and other systemic inequities that create systemic oppression – and the opportunity to examine my own experiences within these systems. 

Toward the end of my master's degree program, I realized that the very things I felt deep shame around were being activated by the work I was attempting to do with other white people. The word “countertransference” summed up what was happening: I was putting my shame and hurt onto the very people I was aiming to support. I saw the parts of myself in them that I hadn’t come to terms with yet. I realized that becoming a therapist would give me the insight and skills to not only take care of myself in this work, but to help others examine their own identities, support healing from personal and systemic trauma, and create long-lasting change and growth. That's when I decided to pursue a second master's degree to become a therapist.

As a lifelong horse person, I continued working with horses throughout my college career.

After completing my master's degree in social work, I was offered a position with an equine-assisted psychotherapy program in Texas. It was my dream job, but over time, I became concerned with how we were incorporating horses into human treatment. I began to see how the mechanisms of oppression humans face and inflict on each other are the same mechanisms we inflict on our horses.

Today, I continue to combine my greatest passions by providing compassionate therapy, education and consulting services rooted in anti-racist, social justice and liberatory frameworks.

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