About Us

Mission

Therapists at Soul Soil Healing aim to partner with clients in healing the soil that nurtures their souls.

We work to provide therapy that is:

trauma-informed

trans-centered

queer-centered

rooted in racial justice

rooted in disability justice

ecology-informed

celebrates health at every size

decolonial

sex positive

culturally humble

anti-oppressive

curious

nonjudgmentally compassionate

kink informed

supportive for people exploring or practicing nonmonogamy

as we serve diverse communities in the Baltimore, MD area, including:

  • children (ages 8+)

  • adolescents

  • adults

  • individuals

  • couples/polycules

  • families

We hope to partner with clients to co-create spaces where we feel able to breathe, explore, question, and heal. Therapy can include learning skills and practices to improve daily functioning alongside long-term relational care to heal from traumatic experiences, build resilience, and cultivate thriving as members of healthy social ecosystems. Together, we can uncover, design, and live into lasting solutions.

A forest scene with tall, leafless trees and a ground covered in leaves, under a purple-tinted sky

Worker-owned Cooperative​​​

As a business, we operate under the principles of a worker-owned cooperative.

This means that we are a democratic workplace, and company wealth, decision-making, and responsibility is fairly distributed amongst all worker-owners and employees.

We value the development, health, and well-being of each of our therapists and staff alongside valuing the therapeutic work that we do. We value navigating interpersonal conflict compassionately and candidly. We value radical authenticity, acceptance, creativity, and cooperation. 

We also care for each other, support each other, and have funalong the way!

Here's a peak into some of us connecting in our office suite!

Four people sitting on the floor in a circle in front of a glass door with water droplets on it, room with beige walls and gray carpet.
A transmasculine person sitting on a red vintage sofa, reading a book, with a window and decorative windowsill behind them, in a cozy living room with framed pictures on the wall, a tea station, and a small table with a lamp and a radio.
Spacious lobby with hardwood floors, large windows, and a colorful rainbow flag hanging on the wall. There is a red velvet couch, a small sitting area with a bookshelf. The room is decorated with plants and artwork by queer and trans artists.
Two people engaging in a conversation in an office. One is sitting on a cushion near the wall, gesturing with her hands, while the other is sitting cross-legged on a cushion on the floor facing her. There is a couch and colorful artwork on the walls.
Small, cozy office space with a large window, blue curtains, a green armchair with a decorative pillow, a gray sofa with a colorful pillow, a small black desk with office supplies, a standing lamp, a tall floor lamp, and artwork of a flowering tree on the wall.

Soul Soil Collective

Soul Soil Healing was founded by Dr. Kris Gebhard and Emily Rizzo in 2023 as part of the Soul Soil Collective. Soul Soil Healing’s values align with Soul Soil Collective’s mission of supporting culturally-competent, evidence-based and ecology-informed holistic healing services including therapy, retreats, and other community programming that invite collaborators to deepen their relationships with and learn from local ecology, land, and the more-than-human world. We work in collaboration with Souls Soil Collective Farm to support access to land held in common for collective land-based healing by individuals/groups who face racist, generational, and classist barriers from access to land stewardship, especially Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, and gender and/or sexual minorities.

Based on a land acknowledgment statement drafted by a Susquehanna and Shawnee elder for the MSAC Land Acknowledgment Project,as well as information shared by Piscataway Indian Nation tribal consultants with the MSAC Land Acknowledgment Project.

We acknowledge that the places today known as Baltimore City and Baltimore County, Harford County, and Cecil County exist as the result of duress. In 1652, Susquehannock leaders unwillingly transferred these lands to the English in an unsuccessful effort to stop English settlers encroaching up the Susquehanna River. We acknowledge that these places and their Indigenous inhabitants exist without rigid political borders and boundaries maintained by settlers and settler governments. The Piscataway Indian Nation also has a long history in this area and continues to maintain a relationship with the lands surrounding Baltimore. Along with the Piscataway Conoy Tribe, the Piscataway Indian Nation received recognition by the State of Maryland in 2012.

We acknowledge the social, physical, spiritual, and kinship relationships this land continues to share with Indigenous nations of the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay; we acknowledge that these relationships have been displaced, damaged, and dispelled by colonists’ insatiable thirst for acquisition and domination. We acknowledge a place out of balance with its true purpose in being. We acknowledge our occupation of Susquehannock and Picataway lands. We acknowledge the continuing presence of Indigenous nations, and the shelter and nourishment that this place continues to provide all Native peoples who live here today. We acknowledge our responsibility to Indigenous nations to repair unhealthy relationships and to steward all life. When Soul Soil Collective is able to buy legal access to land, we will provide material reparations to Native peoples who have been displaced from that land via land tax. We will pursue epistemic and environmental justice -- seeking to center relationally-based and Indigenous knowledge and life ways that have been suppressed through colonial capitalism -- through consensual reparative relationships with local Indigenous organizations and groups.

Minimalist abstract logo design featuring a stylized leaf shape created with smooth, flowing lines in light purple on a black background.

Land acknowledgement and pledge of responsibility

A lakeside view of Lake Montabello with tall reeds in the foreground, calm water, and a partly cloudy sky with scattered clouds.
Pink flowering trees on a grassy hillside under a bright blue sky with the sun shining.
A scenic view of trees with green and orange autumn foliage against a clear blue sky in a forested area.