Antonia Teresa Amore-Broccoli, MSW, LCSW

Antonia joins SheWrites.com seeking additional support and community as a lesbian feminist writer. Her intention is to join a community of other women authors as she continues to writes her memoir, Stega Rosa, and a separate addiction studies/psychology book about cannabis addiction among women.

Follow her blog (insert a link to your blog here) as she writes about her writing process, her recovery, parenting adult children, as well as her daily spiritual practice of yoga and meditation with a witchy Buddhist edge.

Antonia’s second book, The Sunlight of the Spirit; Women Living in Hope, Freedom and Recovery from Marijuana/Cannabis Addiction, is a study of marijuana addition among women, cannabis addiction itself: as well as personal stories from women in or recovering from cannabis addiction.

'Stega Rosa' follows her life from growing up with language and hearing disabilities to the persistent challenges and obstacles she overcame to become the first person in her working-class Italian American family to obtain a college degree. 'Stega Rosa' depicts the severe child abuse and incest she survived that resulted in an adolescent pregnancy and later to her chosen path of teenage motherhood. Antonia writes about living as a teenage mom, becoming a health care and lesbian activist, coming out and staying out since the mid 1970s, and working numerous trades as she and her young child lived through poverty and homelessness. Antonia writes openly about her personal journey and recovery from marijuana addiction, the foster care system as a young mother, parenting a child with disabilities, and living with the long-term chronic effects of cerebral palsy, cannabis addiction and post traumatic stress disorder.

Antonia has contributed to the following anthologies (authored under her birth name Teresa Antonia Broccoli):
• Out in the Redwoods, ed. Irene Reti. “Yolanda’s Moon” a narrative. Regents of the University of California, 2004.
• Hey Paesan: Writing by Lesbians and Gay Men of Italian Descent ed. Denise Nico Leto, Giovanna Capone and Tommi Avicolli Mecca. Three Guineas Press, 1999.
Antonia is a psychotherapist in Santa Cruz County. Antonia has been a Medical Social Worker for 26 years and a Women's Health Care Advocate for over 40 years. She teaches the power of self awareness through love and compassion for self and others through spirituality, meditation and mantras. In her private practice, she utilizes advanced EMDR skills for rewiring the brain from addiction, attachment, loss and trauma. Other modalities include the expressive arts of watercolor mandala, process painting, soulcollage© and creative writing. Antonia specializes in healing childhood trauma and loss and grief, as well as depression and anxiety. She has facilitated “Expressive Arts for Your Heart and Soul: Writing and Expressive Art Workshops and Retreats for Women.”

National Association of Social Workers
EMDRIA
Parnell Institute: for EMDR psychotherapists trained under Laurel Parnell, PhD
Soul Collage Facilitators
National Women's Health Network
National Center for Lesbian Rights

Kundalini Yoga: Spirit Voyage and Kundalini Lounge.

Writing for Your Heart and Soul