A white femme person looks at the viewer. She has brown hair with bangs, and in a bun. She is wearing a black and flowered open shirt, over a black tank top. She is also wearing necklaces. She stands in front of a green plant filled background.

As a Certified Guide with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy, I now lead people into the woods (or their own home or backyard) to remember what our ancestors knew (and many still know) - that our true selves are both much larger and also so much smaller than our human bodies. Together, we remember that this human body deserves deep love and care, and that extending our intimacy and love into the land and all who dwell there nourishes both us and them (Us).

My professional experiences

In addition to being a certified Forest Therapy Guide, I am a licensed social worker (LMSW). I carry over 20 years of experience accompanying people during and after crisis, loss, trauma, and grief. I am an adjunct professor of social work at Portland State University; have co-led organizations and programs; and have extensive experience as a coalition builder, collaborator, and trainer. I am certified in Conflict Resolution and Mediation and in Wilderness First Aid.

My identities and positionality

I am queer, white, Ashkenazi Jew-ish, cis/femme, and an animist. I walk on the lands of my home as an uninvited guest, and I honor the labor and love of the original and ongoing stewards of this land, including the Multnomah, Clackamas, Kathlamet, Tualatin Kalapuya, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook, and many other Indigenous Peoples that have lived, traded, and moved through this region since time immemorial. The name of my practice honors those from whom I have received the gift of life, my human and plant ancestors.

I benefit from white privilege. I am in loving labor to destroy whiteness, and I am actively dreaming in the world to come. This includes paying reparations and redistributing money, prioritizing PIC abolition, advocating for Palestinian freedom, and working toward justice and liberation for all. Informed by cultural humility and openness, I collaborate to offer spaces (indoors and out) that center and create as much safety and ease for People of the Global Majority as possible. This will be a never-ending learning and unlearning.

I carry beloved grief - from deaths, from infertility and miscarriages, and from the myriad other ways that loss weaves into life. Often now (not always), I know grief/love as the rich and fertile soil in which my life grows and is nourished. I live in constant gratitude to the many ancestors and beings (human and Otherwise) that have laid this winding and beautiful path before me. I am so grateful to the web of family~community that I am held by, including my partner, child, and animal companions.

If you’re interested in hearing more about my path to becoming a Certified Forest Therapy Guide, you can listen to a conversation I had with my dear friend and coach, Megan Leatherman of A Wild New Work on her wonderful podcast!

Learn more about guided Forest Therapy

To learn more about Forest Therapy, please check out the slideshow below, created (unbeknownst to me until the big reveal) by my amazing, brilliant, and totally wonderful 8-year-old.

If for some reason you’d rather read a bunch of words written by me, you can read my introduction to guided Forest Therapy here (but really, the slideshow though… ).

some words about who I am & how I got here

I’m Heather Dorfman (she/her). I have been shaped by relationships with mountains, trees, humans, water, dirt, moss, and many other beings. Love, care, grief, pain, and an aspiration to always connect eventually led me to a life devoted to community and social justice work.

After many years of walking alongside people in the depths of loss, crisis, and trauma, I stepped outside - literally. I remembered the refuge I and so many have experienced in the Other Than Human world, and embarked on a path into guided Forest Therapy (also known as Forest Bathing).