Saralina Kamholtz

Saralina Kamholtz, MA, she/ her/ hers: I am a relational, trauma‑informed therapist who honors the healing process with warmth, creativity, and deep compassion. I walk alongside individuals as they navigate their unique paths toward healing, believing that the challenges we face can create distance from our truest selves. Therapy offers a space to realign with our deepest values and most authentic identities, fostering greater connection and meaning. For those who are interested, I also incorporate therapeutic writing, mindfulness, and somatic practices as supportive tools for embodied integration and empowered living.

I work with adults experiencing anxiety, depression, grief, loss, life transitions, shame, abandonment, and relational distress, helping them reconnect with awareness, intuition, and insight. My focus is on both the internal work and living infrastructure that can help individuals strengthen trust in themselves and navigate toward lives of authenticity and meaning.

Additionally, I specialize in supporting women as they heal childhood wounds, move through the losses and disruptions of major life transitions, and recover from relational dynamics of all kinds.

I have worked with adults across the lifespan, offering a space to honor and explore life experience to uncover the wisdom and resilience that lie within. Together, we co-create a space to slow down, listen inward, and rediscover strength, clarity, and insight. My work with individuals focuses on nurturing self-compassion, healing, and growth so they can move forward feeling more grounded, whole, and authentic.

Education and Credentials

• Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, North Park University
• Masters in English, University of Illinois at Chicago
• BA in English and Cultural Anthropology, Binghamton University
• Certified Nia Somatic Movement Facilitator
• Therapeutic Writing Facilitator
• Open Studio Project Creative Process Facilitator
• Certified Conflict Resolution Mediator

What specific modalities do you practice and are you certified?

I focus on helping clients tune into themselves to realign and reconnect with their own internal resourcefulness.  My approach is compassionate, creative, and holistic, often drawing on writing, creative, and somatic approaches to support clients in the process of exploration and deepening self-awareness.  I specialize in helping clients use therapeutic writing to facilitate the healing process and become more integrated.  I have studied writing practice with Natalie Goldberg and facilitated writing as a way to reconnect with the self and find a way through even the most difficult moments.  As a certified Nia Movement facilitator, I also enjoy integrating somatic approaches such as breath work and therapeutic movement into my work with clients.  I see myself as a companion helping clients return to authenticity, agency, and self-support in their lives and relationships.  I work with clients to co-create spaces of self-compassion through restorative practices.

What are you excited about? What is your passion? 

I’m passionate about embodied dance, tuning in through writing, and connecting in nature.  I believe that much of our experience can lead to our getting separated from ourselves, but therapy can support us in how we come back to alignment with our deepest values and most authentic selves for lives of deeper connection and meaning.  I’m passionate about unlearning harmful cultural messages and supporting adults in recovery from unhealthy self-concept and relationship dynamics.  I believe in the power of simplicity, rhythm, and ritual, and I believe that uncensored play is a gift that we can relearn as adults, supporting us in attuned intuition and hopeful imagination.

What do you like about being a therapist?

As a therapist, I love being able to do the deeper work that’s possible in one-on-one relationship.  I love getting to work with individuals, creating a relationship in which it’s possible to fully acknowledge all the imperfect parts of yourself and feel free to explore without judgment.  I come from a background of teaching in higher education and facilitating therapeutic arts for adults, and I’ve found that when inquiry is driven from within it can lead not only to intuition, imagination, and empowerment, but profound healing.  It’s a joy and a privilege to accompany individuals on their healing journey.

What do you like to do when you are not working? What do you do for fun?

When I’m not working, I head to my favorite dance class, then out to grab a bite with friends.  I love getting out for a walk by the lake, browsing a good bookstore, or treasure hunting, and I love getting to see a good movie on the big screen or catch live theater. I don’t go anywhere without my notebook on hand, and I’m often catching snippets of an NPR interview that inspire me or jotting something down from a book that I’m reading.  I love getting to rejuvenate in my weekly art and writing circle, joining a friend’s tarot workshop, or going to an in-person FAN book talk on parenting, relationships, work-life balance, or well-being. I believe in small, solo adventures and love to travel to visit friends and family.

Go-to creative outlets:

My go-to creative outlets to restore are definitely dance and writing–I need the joy of movement, and landing on the page is the best way I know to regularly tune in to myself.  One of my favorite quotes is, “Writing teaches us our mysteries.” by Marie de L’Incarnation.

Something you might not know about me from my bio:

I’m also an improv enthusiast who’s had the pleasure of taking workshops and performing in an improv troupe.  Through improv and the risk of feeling ridiculous, I’ve gotten to practice the pleasure in play and the freedom in failure.