Katherine Fuguet
Peer Mentor (She/Her/Hers) 🏳️🌈
SPECIAL INTERESTS: Spirituality and Religion / Ethical Non-monogamy/ Internal Family Systems / Highly Sensitive Persons/ Connecting to Nature/ Anxiety/ Borderline Personality Disorder/ Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue/Parenting and Blended Families /Yoga and Meditation/ Nutrition and Exercise/ Body Positivity/ Intergenerational Healing/ Restorative Justice/ Hispanic and Latino Interests
Katherine was born in Florida, the child of an American mother and Cuban refugee-immigrant father. In late elementary school, her family moved to Minnesota, where she grew up. She felt the pressure of success common to immigrant families from an early age. This combined with cultural sexism, familial emotional and physical abuse, and sexual assault in early adulthood, resulted in perfectionism, depression, anxiety, imposter syndrome, panic attacks, disordered eating, C-PTSD, and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
Since her family held a strong stigma against mental health treatment, Katherine had to fight for access to necessary care, including intensive outpatient programs, partial hospitalization, regular therapy, and medication. Now, although she continues to work with lingering maladaptive thought and emotional patterns, she has cultivated a meaningful and peaceful life. She believes strongly that many “disorders” are the reasonable consequences of some forms of chronic trauma, and is committed to empowering others to develop effective tools for recovery without shame.
While undergoing intensive mental health treatment, Katherine developed a calling to support others in recovery. She began by reading psychology books and magazines, moved on to completing short trainings in restorative justice and conflict mediation, and finally dove into academic study in college. In 2020, she completed a dual undergraduate degree in social work and psychology at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire. During that time, she completed a 6-month internship at a domestic violence and sexual assault shelter and worked as a suicide prevention educator for the college. After graduation, she worked for a family therapy clinic as a behaviorist, helping parents and children learn positive ways of interacting. She continues to learn through non-credit courses in Internal Family Systems (IFS), somatic healing, psychedelic-assisted therapies, and other perspectives.
Her experience working with families has both benefited and been informed by her own family life. Katherine practices ethical non-monogamy and is a step-parent to one of her partner’s three children. Katherine loves to learn about child development and new parenting techniques, and she is looking forward to supporting peers navigating stepparenting and blended family dynamic. In addition, Katherine is especially interested in supporting non-monogamous peers, with or without children, to develop healthy and effective boundaries, communication, and interactions in their relationships.
A highly sensitive and neurodivergent person, Katherine regularly felt overwhelmed growing up, but didn’t know why. Without support, having high sensory sensitivity exacerbated her mental health struggles. She has had to consciously cultivate a peaceful life with manageable exposure to stimuli and is excited to support neurodivergent peers in the ongoing process of creating satisfying lives for themselves.
High sensitivity also drew her to study spirituality and religion, where she ultimately found frameworks for meaning in her healing. Today, Katherine is an ordained Spiritualist minister who incorporates meditation, energy work, mediumship, ritual, inner parts work, ancestor work, tarot, visualization, sound, yoga, and herbalism into her practice. She draws inspiration from all religions and loves learning more about them, believing that each contains some essential truths, but is most knowledgeable about Pagan and New Age practices, Earth-Honoring traditions, New Thought Christian movements, Buddhism, Taoism, and Judaism. Katherine is passionate about supporting people on their personal spiritual paths to find meaning in their recovery, in whatever way works best for them. She is especially excited to support peers as they connect to themselves through developing intuition and self-trust.
The COVID-19 pandemic was life-altering for Katherine. As a lasting effect of contracting the virus multiple times, Katherine developed the chronic and incurable pain-processing disorder Fibromyalgia. Because of this, Katherine now has lived experience of chronic pain and fatigue and has had to learn lifestyle alterations to manage the illness. Katherine has always been interested in healthy lifestyle elements, such as nutrition and fitness, but she no longer believes in “perfect” health. Instead, Katherine is learning to be gentle with her body and to discover the unique ways that health can look for her. This is a journey of self-love and body positivity that she is grateful to be able to share with others.
Katherine is IFS-informed and incorporates IFS-informed parts work into her mental health recovery process. As part of her healthy lifestyle, she practices yoga and meditation regularly and has developed, out of necessity, an interest in gluten-free and lactose-free cooking. In her free time, Katherine enjoys travelling, reading novels, foraging for plants and mushrooms with her partners and step-children, working out, learning languages, and cuddling her black cat.