YOU ARE QUEER GOLD.
Get the care you deserve:
with understanding
and without barriers.
“The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it…”
-James Baldwin
Hi, I’m Sunnie Townsend.
I am a trauma practitioner, educator, certified psilocybin facilitator, and founder of Queer Care Connections. My work is rooted in a simple belief: healing happens in relationship. It emerges when people have space to be witnessed, understood, challenged with care, and supported in becoming more fully themselves.
For more than 20 years, I have worked in roles centered around human growth, transformation, and community care. Before founding Queer Care Connections, I spent six years as a wilderness instructor and Leave No Trace Master Educator, leading 20, 30, and 40 day expeditions through some of the most remote landscapes in the United States, including the Wind River Range of Wyoming and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
In those environments, I learned that growth rarely happens because someone has all the answers. It happens when people feel supported enough to meet themselves honestly. Whether navigating a mountain pass, a life transition, a trauma history, or an identity exploration, the work often begins in the same place: slowing down, listening deeply, and learning to trust our own inner wisdom.
Today, I bring those lessons into every aspect of my practice.
As a queer and trans practitioner, I understand first hand the barriers many LGBTQIA+ people encounter when seeking care. Too often, people searching for support are met with misunderstanding, pathologization, or environments that require them to educate the very professionals meant to help them. My intention is to create spaces where queer and trans people can arrive as they are and experience care that is affirming, trauma informed, and grounded in dignity.
My clinical and educational background includes a Master's degree in Theology and Psychology from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, certification as a Psilocybin Facilitator through InnerTrek, and advanced training in trauma, Internal Family Systems, attachment, consent, sexuality, and relational healing. I also serve as Faculty with the Trauma of Money Institute, where I have helped train more than 1,000 practitioners worldwide in trauma-informed and relational approaches to healing.
My work is informed by Internal Family Systems, somatic awareness, attachment theory, polyvagal theory, experiential education, and anti-oppressive practice. I specialize in supporting people navigating:
• Complex trauma and CPTSD
• Religious trauma and spiritual harm
• Gender identity exploration
• Sexuality and intimacy
• Attachment wounds and relational ruptures
• Boundaries and self-trust
• Life transitions and identity development
• Psychedelic preparation and integration
I also provide consultation, training, and mentorship for practitioners seeking to deepen their capacity in parts work, LGBTQIA+ affirming, trauma-informed, and ethically grounded care.
At the heart of everything I do is a deep respect for the wisdom people already carry within them. I don't believe healing is about fixing what is broken. I believe it is about developing a more compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves that learned to survive, adapting to our circumstances while remaining connected to our humanity.
It is a gift to accompany people as they navigate healing, grief, identity, belonging, and becoming. Thank you for being here.
A Quality of Becoming...My years in wilderness education continue to shape how I understand healing today. Leading eleven people through 20, 30, and 40 day backcountry expeditions required far more than outdoor skills. It demanded attunement to group dynamics, emotional regulation, conflict navigation, risk assessment, consent, trust-building, and the ability to remain grounded when conditions became uncertain. Looking back, I see those expeditions as some of my earliest training in holding transformational containers.
Today, I often tell clients that I invite people into the wilderness of themselves. I consider the psyche and soul to be among the last great wildernesses, vast, complex, beautiful, and often misunderstood. Much like a mountain range, our inner landscapes contain places of wonder, grief, resilience, mystery, and untapped wisdom. My role is not to lead from the front with a map of who you should become, but to accompany you as you develop a deeper relationship with the terrain that already exists within you.
I also believe healing is both personal and collective. Many of the wounds people carry are not individual failures, but adaptations to systems of oppression, disconnection, and survival. Part of my work is supporting people in untangling inherited stories, recovering forms of wisdom that have been marginalized or forgotten, and participating in the ongoing work of remembering how to belong to ourselves, one another, and the living world. In this way, healing becomes more than symptom reduction. It becomes a practice of reconnection, reclamation, and collective liberation.