We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Claudia Barfoot. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Claudia below.

Claudia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

The biggest risk I’ve taken happened during 2009 when I chose to transform my whole life in the pursuit of love. It all began in 2008, I was living in Mexico City where I was born and raised, it was a year where I was towards the end of a Doctorate degree in Psychoanalytic Clinical Practice, I was a professor, had my private practice, was having lots of fun with my friends, and everything I was doing felt meaningful and fulfilling. I was recovering from a very harsh breakup, dating every now and then, until one night I met the love of my life. Since that night, we kept seeing each other every week. He wasn’t from Mexico so I knew he would leave the country eventually so I decided to enjoy the time while he was living in my home country. Things moved fast, and after a few months we moved in together, things were working well but the financial crash happened. After a few months he needed to go back to New York to keep his job, so he asked me to move back with him. So I took the biggest risk of my life, and said I would do it, but he needed to be patient because it would take me a few months to finish what I was doing (school, clients, etc). I didn’t know if things would work out in the relationship, I didn’t know what I was going to do in a different country, and I also didn’t know how hard it was going to be to leave everything and everyone I knew behind. I wasn’t prepared for the loss, the grief, and the impact that the undoing of my life would have in my identity, but love was the guide, and there was excitement for the unknown and the adventure. In July of 2009 I moved to the U.S. and have stayed here, creating a new life, an identity closer to my essence, and a family that I wouldn’t change for anything in my life. The risk was all I needed to get what I always wanted.

Claudia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a Holistic Mental Health Specialist, Psychoanalyst, Dream Worker, Natural Medicine (Psychedelic) Guide, and Sound Healer.

As a psychotherapist and trauma informed mental health professional, I guide people to allow their truths to emerge, encourage them to honor themselves, to allow all of who they are to belong, and to let their self discovery transform their lives. With the same gravitas, I’ve apprenticed with elders, the ancestral ways of knowing and healing, the ways to walk in beauty, integrity, love and reciprocity, and the use of plant medicine in the context of ceremony.

My diverse experience working with varied communities, and my rigorous commitment to explore, learn, and help others, has provided me with enough roadmaps to help the people I work with navigate their internal world and its depths, embrace the wild ride life provides, connect to their ancestors, and ignited their inner healer capacity to then live a wholesome and fulfilling life.

All that I do is done with a full heart, with skill, and profound love and respect for the beauty of human life. As a way to express the way I’ve integrated everything I know, all of who I am, and everything I love the most, I created The Land of Possible, a cross-cultural and collaborative approach to healing.

Throughout my life I’ve found that the ways of healing, self discovery, and homecoming are as diverse as we are. I invite all people to to find their way, to find their medicine, and to find it in creative and joyful ways.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

Yes! All the decisions and paths I’ve taken had lead me to where I am now and in the here and now it’s a life that feels fulfilling, meaningful, with purpose and that benefits other lives. It is important for me to be useful for the greater good of the collective and to walk a path that is beautiful and driven by the heart.
Something I learned by immigrating and losing it all (even when it was done willingly), was to try to find other expressions to my hearts calling. It was pivotal moment of external exploration and internal observation. I was able to find that at my core what drives me is beauty, the joy of learning to see things in different ways, a profound love for life, and a profoundly compassionate heart that always directs me towards the relief of human suffering. While I ended up going back to the mental health field, continued to apprentice and hone other healing modalities, I know now that what needs expression lives at my core, and it would always find it’s way out into the world, through psychotherapy, dreamwork, photography, art, sound healing, curanderismo, cooking a nurturing meal for the ones I love, and probably other ways I haven’t yet allowed my self to dream, and imagine.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

Doing your own internal work, your own healing, the deepening of who you are, the widening of your perspective, the openness of your heart, the precision of your words, the authenticity of your presence, and a good sense of humor.

Most importantly, it matters to open yourself to others peoples lives, visions, sufferings and joys. There are no better teachers that people themselves.

I lived for 10 year in New York City, when I immigrated, lost myself, found myself, went back to school and tried to redo myself and my career. At the end of those 10 years I worked at the Crime Victims Center as part of Mount Sinai St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital, and helped many folks who were survivors of sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence, and/or human trafficking. And while every single client I had taught me great lessons, those that were trafficked and unwillingly lost everything they had, taught me the most about hope, resilience, love for life, and the survival of the human spirit.

Success in my field means allowing yourself to be changed by every person you work with. It’s a shared work, a collaboration, and they heal as much as we grow with them. To this day, all the clients I’ve worked with throughout my 20 year career in mental health, are in my heart, my bones, and inform the way I understand the paths and the possibilities of the clients I currently work with, and the ones that are yet to come.

I wouldn’t change my path at all. This is it. This is the path. I know how it feels and I can help others find theirs. We all have an important and specific role in the web of life, and we need to step up and take that space and that role.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thelandofpossible.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelandofpossible/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudia-barfoot-ma-lpc-lmhc-6b596b69/

Image Credits

Julie Harris