Today we’d like to introduce you to Angelique Umutesi, LCSW .
Hi Angelique, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My pathway toward this work began with my own lived experience as a former refugee, and how trauma, loss, and displacement shaped their sense of safety and belonging. I had also seen how belief, family, and community could forge tremendous strength and healing. The combination of pain and resilience influenced my perspective of people and the work I do.
My endeavor into social work felt like a natural progression of that calling. Over that time, I have worked with many individuals and families experiencing a variety of challenges and hardships, from anxiety and loss, to adjusting after a major life transition. During this journey, I continually felt an inner pull to create something that honored both the science of therapy and the spirit of healing.
Then Roots & Refuge Center LLC was born. A place born out of cultural accessibility, compassion, and connection. A place to be re-storied and re-imagined in peace within. A therapist in Texas and California, I work through an integrative, trauma-informed lens that unites evidence-based practice, mindfulness, and spiritual components.
My story continues to unfold in many ways. Each step taken guided by a strong belief that healing happens through each other in community, and despite the hardest seasons, there is always a way back to ourselves.
At Roots & Refuge, we hope to nurture healing, embrace culture, and help individuals and communities become stronger with love, bravery, and connection.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s been a long road but every challenge has reinforced my intention. Coming to this work as a former refugee provided me early learning about resilience. Finding ways to navigate systems not created for people like me, gave me the motivation and empathy I bring into my work today.
Building Roots & Refuge created new external stretching for me. I had to alway get the clinical stuff of therapy down; but I also had to learn how to lead, build a business, develop, and grow. There were long nights, tough realizations, and many times I questioned myself, and I remember what kept me grounded and always focused on the larger vision – a space of healing that is accessible, grounding and culturally safe.
Every challenge has helped me be more intentional as a therapist, and a leader. Challenges for me now are invitations to expand and grow from. I am proud to share with you the solid foundation that I’ve constructed from them.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Roots & Refuge Center LLC was built to be more than a therapy practice; it’s where we restore, belong and cultivate healing. We offer trauma-informed, culturally attuned mental health care for individuals and families experiencing grief, life transitions, anxiety, and long-term effects of trauma and/or displacement.
Roots & Refuge practices a holistic, integrative approach that sets us apart. We recognize that healing does not have a template. Our work pulls from evidence-based practices like ACT, DBT and mindfulness-based practices, while also keeping spirituality, identity, and community at the foundation of healing. Each client’s story is met with a sense of curiosity, cultural attunement, and compassion.
We work with refugees, immigrants, and those with overlapping identities in specialized therapy, but we welcome anyone who seeks meaningful change in their lives. A lot of our work centers on re-connection after a disconnection or loss where by finding strength, a sense of purpose, and a feeling at home within oneself.
I am most excited that Roots & Refuge reflects authenticity. From the name to the name, it expresses something fiercely personal to us which our philosophy that true healing occurs at the roots and is cultivated through connection. We are growing our offerings for workshops, community programs and wellness tools to help make mental health care accessible and standardized.
If I could tell readers something, I would want them to know that it is more than therapy sessions and therapy practices. It is about offering people refuge where they can slow down, sit, breathe and begin again.
In a nutshell: Healing begins at the roots.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
I hope Roots & Refuge acts as a bridge—a bridge to connection for those in our community, themselves, and their cultures and sense of belonging, rather than a place for solitude. Trauma, or disconnection, is much more likely to be healed through connection and community, faith, and areas that welcome the whole person.
I hope my practice helps redefine what mental health care means to various cultures. Therapy often gets presented in a more clinical, removed, sterile manner, as opposed to the actual real-life experience of trauma and suffering as a whole. I hope Roots & Refuge serves as a model of what a human, culturally competent, and spiritually embodied practice can look like—one that utilizes culture as a tool or asset, and healing as a collective, shared journey.
The most crucial element, personally, for me is authenticity, empathy, and purpose. I really don’t ever want to forget what started this process to hold space for people during their most vulnerable moments and tell them they are literally not alone. I function based on the principles of being neither an ineffective person nor a professional, but rather a responsible, ethical, and heart-centered individual. Every individual interaction, or every session, is an opportunity to bring back humanity, to give help back to somebody, and give power back, or remind them of their inherent power.
Long-term, I hope Roots & Refuge becomes a community center that trains other clinicians and mental health professionals, with me, especially, acknowledging that clinicians will be primarily counselor-therapists. So they will, in that way, mainly represent the community. And if they inspired a sense of compassion, a sense of integrity, and a sense of cultural humility, that would give me a sense of system change outside of myself, I can feel I can look back on.
It’s not about the healing; it’s the reminder that they have everything they need to begin the process once again.
Contact Info:
- Website: rootsandrefugecenter.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rootsrefugecenter/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/roots-refuge-center/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@angeliquelcsw?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
