Cilla Holmes (she/her) is a Registered Therapeutic Counsellor, and a Certified Expressive Arts Therapist who works in the intersection of nature-based and arts-based therapies. She is also a wild-foraged ink maker, a deer trail wanderer, a parent, a teacher, and an all-around expressive arts geek.

Cilla’s work with adults, youth and families is multi-modal, and rooted in many years of teaching and mentoring in the arts, and a lifetime of resourcing in nature. Trust in our innate creativity, ecological belonging, and inner knowing lies at the heart of Cilla’s relationship to coming alongside others on their journeys of growth and healing.

Whether she is working in a cedar grove, or in her arts studio collective, she loves supporting people to honour their own stories, to attune to their essential glimmers of joy and resilience, and to root into their own self-resourcing practices in nature and the arts.

As an integrative therapist, Cilla works from a somatic, ecological, and strength-based perspective, and draws from her background in therapeutic arts, wilderness mentorship and rite of passage work. She also integrates approaches from her training in Internal Family Systems parts work, Jungian dreamwork, focusing-oriented psychotherapy, trauma-informed grief tending, crisis intervention, and solutions-oriented therapy.

Cilla grew up kayaking, writing stories, and making art on the traditional Wabanaki Dawnlands coastal territory of the Algonquin and Penobscot people. As a sixth generation settler of Scottish, Irish, and Swedish descent, Cilla holds gratitude for loon song at dusk, and for each day she spends deepening into unlearning and relationship with Coast Salish lands.

Email: counselling@thrivingroots.org

Booking Details

Cilla is delighted to offer her services with Thriving Roots Counselling Services, to both adults and youth, on Mondays outdoors and Thursdays online. Please enquire about other booking times.

Book an Intake Call or Consultation here