About Your Cultural Practitioner

Grace is Yaqui/Mexican, with roots in Sonora and Baja California. Like many families in Mexico, her mother and tias (aunties) used cultural remedies to help keep their families healthy. She grew up experiencing the curing of empacho through the abdominal sobadas that her mother gave her and watching her auntie cure neighborhood children of mal de ojo and caida de mollera.  As a child, she was particularly influenced by watching and listening to another tia, a curandera, share stories about helping neighbors and friends with various spiritual illnesses as well as to her uncle, who was a well-known sobador and huesero, bonesetter. Being raised within cultural ways, she understood from an early age how demanding the path of Curanderismo can be, and that one must be truly called to these healing ways by Spirit. Although the ancestors visited her in dreams during childhood, it wasn't until the mid-1990s after experiencing very clear warning dreams that failure to return to the traditional medicine ways of her family/ancestors would bring severe consequences (a story that she shares during some of her pláticas), that she formally undertook the study of Curanderismo and other healing traditions by undergoing rigorous training with healers in Baja California and the United States.

Married at 16 and divorced at 19, a single parent with two daughters, Grace left high school in order to support her family and later received her GED. She worked hard, often holding two jobs, which eventually led to her becoming the administrator of a psychiatric partial hospitalization program for several years. In 1991, she started a consultancy practice specializing in public relations and cultural competency. In acknowledgment of her commitment to serving her community, in 1993, she became one of 26 women nationwide to be selected as a Fellow of the National Hispana Leadership Institute, a collaborative project with the Center for Creative Leadership and Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. One of the requirements for accepting the NHLI fellowship was the promise to return to one's community and launch a local program. Grace's leadership project was to return to Imperial Valley and establish a local chapter of MANA, a National Organization. In October 1993, after months of intense outreach and organizing, she founded MANA of Imperial Valley, which promotes advocacy and leadership of Hispanics, Latinas, and Chicanas. In acknowledgment of her work, she has been the recipient of many community and leadership awards, including three commendations from the California State Senate.  Now in her late sixties, Grace, in October 2019, was presented with MANA of Imperial Valley's Legacy Award. Most recently, she was the recipient of the Stone of Hope Award by the Imperial Valley Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee for "making a difference in our communities and upholding the principles of Dr. King."

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Answering the Call of the Grandmothers

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Grace was called to the medicine ways in dreams from early childhood. From her late teens through her 30s, she was visited in the dreamtime by a group of Indigenous Grandmothers dressed in the traditional clothing of various Native nations (tribes). They gave her teachings and urged her to return to the ways of the Ancestors, of the Medicine, in preparation for the days to come when she and other women would help usher in and support the return of the energy of the Grandmothers, the spiritual power that would be helping restore balance between the feminine and the masculine in the world as well as bring forth the call from Mother Earth for a return to respecting land, water, and holy places.  Congruent with these personal visions, Grace, in May 2006, attended the gathering of the 13 International Indigenous Grandmothers Council in Huautla de Jimenez in Oaxaca, Mexico. 

During the early 2000s, one of her elders began to strongly encourage her to start sharing with her community what the Grandmothers in Spirit and he had taught her. In July 2006, she was invited by Arizona Western College in Yuma, Arizona, to teach a course on the Native healing ways of the United States and Mexico. Following traditional protocols, Grace approached local Kwatsan elders for permission to bring her medicine to their traditional territory. After receiving their blessings, she accepted AWC's invitation to become an adjunct professor and began teaching the course "Exploring Native American Medicine Ways: Learning from, and honoring, Indigenous Healing Traditions." 

As part of her community responsibilities, she has been asked to participate in baby blessing ceremonies, offer opening prayers for gatherings and social justice actions, provide spiritual assistance to persons during end-of-life transitions, perform house purification rituals, and facilitate family and community conflict resolution circles.

In addition to her Curanderismo practice, Grace continues to have diverse roles in community building and social justice coalitions, helping organize grassroots advocacy groups. In 2013, Grace led a successful social media protest to stop the Disney Corporation from trademarking the Mexican holy days known as Dia de Muertos. She presented on Trauma From a Practitioner's Perspective and led the Cultural & Holistic Practitioners Team during the 2019 San Diego State University Native Truth and Healing California Genocide Conference.

She is a Kumeyaay Original Peoples Alliance member, Kanap Kuahan (Tell the Truth) Coalition, MANA de Imperial Valley, and advisor to the House of the Moon Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women+ Advocacy Training Program). Grace is a member of the  Consciousness & Healing Initiative's Healing Practitioners Council, a member of the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, and serves on the Yaquis of Southern California tribal council.

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Philosophy of Care

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​Grace believes in and encourages a thoughtful blending of traditional Indigenous healing and complementary, holistic practices with a doctor's conventional medical treatments, as appropriate. Rather than an either/or approach, she seeks to educate healthcare providers about the appropriate inclusion of Curanderismo cultural healing interventions with Western conventional medicine in order to address the whole person: body, emotions, mind, relationships, and spirit. Clients referred to Grace by their physician receive support that can promote their responding more satisfactorily to conventional healthcare treatment. Sessions become a part of the client's overall individual treatment plan, with Grace providing feedback to physicians as part of a multidisciplinary treatment team model. 

An engaging speaker, Grace has lectured on Curanderismo at  Pepperdine University, San Diego State University, the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energy & Energy Medicine Conference, Children’s Hospital-Denver,  CSU San Marcos, SDSU School of Social Work, the 2013 Great River Symposium on Mesoamerican acupuncture and Curanderismo, University of Tampa, Iskotew Lodge and Kumik Lodge Elders-in-Residence Program (First Nations, Canada), and other institutions. Grace gave the keynote presentation, "Respecting Indigenous Healing Traditions: from Colonizer to Ally," at the 2022  Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology Annual Conference.

Grace contributed to the book, "Meditations for InterSpiritual Practice: Practices and Readings Drawn from the World's Spiritual Traditions," published in 2012. She also contributed to the book Voice of the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices  (Offerings, essays, poems, and prayers for everyday life), edited by Lara Medina and Martha R. Gonzales. She's also been interviewed by media and quoted in abstracts and dissertations.

Grace considers this path to be one of life-long learning and is committed to continuing to deepen her understanding of health and healing as well as doing her own inner work in order to be of service to the best of her ability, to her community and to the areas where she is invited to share her medicine. She continues her work with an emphasis on respectfully reclaiming traditional culture and healing practices. 

Using a cross-cultural approach, she offers individual healing consultations and spiritual counseling for individuals, couples, and families. Persons from all walks of life, sexual identification, ethnicity, and spiritual/religious paths are welcome.

Grace travels extensively and offers workshops and presentations on Mexico's healing traditions throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. She lives on the unceded land of the Kumeyaay Nation known today as San Diego, California, where they have lived since time immemorial. She actively amplifies the voices of Yaqui (Yoeme) and Kumeyaay People and supports social justice actions and cultural exchanges.  Email her for details on consultations, workshops, and lectures.