What We Believe
We believe healing happens in community.
We believe in the strength of intergenerational connections guided by community elders.
We believe in the slow mindful process of reflection that unearths collective truth. These discoveries form the basis of healing from trauma.
We believe love and compassion are the birthplaces of wholehearted living.
We believe the community is strengthened by fruitful collaboration with like-minded individuals, groups, and organizations.
We believe creativity has no bounds and is accessible to all as a source of healing and sustained well-being.
We believe all are born with root wisdom and dis-ease is the act of lost truth.
We believe honoring the sacred is an act of remembering.
We believe community is built through truth and loyalty to the ethical principle of non-harming.
We believe curiosity is all you need to start that journey to well-being.
Our Story
Ellen and Felicia met and became friends in college in 1993 at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota. They graduated and like so many college friendships they lost track of each other. Fortunately, Ellen and Felicia reconnected in 2015 catching up on all the joys and challenges of the previous 30 years. In acts of compassion, re-membering, and kindness they found their friendship again.
They discovered their life experiences often overlapped and ran parallel. In their collective joys, pains, and desire to build a healing community Tender Roots was born.
In addition to being the co-founder of Tender Roots, Ellen works out of her home art studio and holds circles in classrooms, libraries, stores, the homes of clients, and online. Felicia has been a practicing psychotherapist housed in the Vine Arts Building in South Minneapolis since 2009.
Our Journeys
Felicia’s Journey
I come from a long line of “make it work” people. They had nothing and made something with it. A few seeds became a garden. Old scraps of clothing became a quilt. They could build anything. Fix anything. They made it happen because they had to; their survival depended on it. Gripped by the hands of racism and poverty in the Jim Crow South, my people persisted and survived. They were self sacrificing and hard working. But, their lives were touched by mental illness, domestic violence, anger and self destructive rage. I would spend a lifetime trying to make sense of a family narrative replete with trauma and loss. Family demons became my demons. I have spent most of my adult life healing intergenerational trauma. It was a struggle for me to find help and support. I have learned a few things along the way. I am determined to share what I know that others’ pathways to healing might be more accessible. I am also in private practice; Wellness Ways
Ellen’s Journey
My roots are tender. Born in a bone dry well of shame, scarcity, woundedness, and loneliness my roots crave the quenching of water filled kisses. Soaking each tendril with nurturing warmth and belonging, I soften their gnarly cracked ringlets. Tapping into an overflow of nourishment, I connect to the teacher within to dig deep, to uncover, to re-member and reconnect what has been lost. I explore for me and all those who came before me who couldn’t. I lean into the topsoil and its stories that make it possible for me to be here. I root into the soils of my hardworking ancestors and their severed connections making this trip viable. Their resilience and strength allows me the privilege and the pain to share what I create and learn. Rippling out a new beginning; one of many people. Creating a crowded path on composted soils, into the forest we slowly walk to plant our seeds of wellness and togetherness. Tender roots is my dream of tending our journey’s with careful, gentle hands, connecting our roots, and allowing for healing to begin again and again. More of my creative work can found here; Lively Brush -Creatively Healing
Our Backgrounds
Dr. Felicia Washington Sy
Dr. Felicia Washington Sy earned her Master’s of Social Work from the University of Minnesota and her doctorate from the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work. She is a licensed independent clinical social worker and traumatologist with over 20 years of experience providing trauma-informed care to sexual and physical violence survivors.
Dr. Sy is an adjunct faculty member in the University of St. Thomas Graduate School of Social Work and combines mindfulness-based social work practice and intercultural theory to train direct practitioners to work with diverse populations across the Twin Cities Metropolitan area.
Passionate about social justice and human rights, she is the mental health consultant for Minnesota Safe Harbor Programs and a DEI consultant for local nonprofits. In addition to being a co-founder of Tender Roots, she maintains a private psychotherapy practice in the metro area.
Ellen Sweetman
Ellen Sweetman is a full-time creative, healer, visual artist, explorer, mentor, teacher and creator of livelybrush, LLC. She is currently integrating multiracial identity, trauma (individual and collective), and a variety of new modalities into her journey of learning and teaching art medicine.
She volunteers with local community spaces in different capacities which includes finding your inner creative, teaching art as process, wellness with creativity, showing how playfulness and art can heal. She loves drumming, kundalini, connecting with nature, dancing with her 4 children, and diving into soul-filled communities.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art, Theater, Spanish, certified in Creative Depth Coaching, School of Awakening/Unlearning, Conscious Healing, Collective Trauma, Mindfulness and currently enrolled in Racial Somatic Abolitionism. Her journey as a wellness doula has led her on the path of tapping her own eclectic wisdom and creating new language around opening her heart, what it means to be, bridging realities, embodiment, agency and resilience.