Nicole Sartini

Nicole Sartini, M.Ed., LPCC, IMHP is a therapist, founder, and movement builder helping to reshape how health care works.She co-founded Bridge Counseling and Wellness, an award-winning integrative practice, and founded the Mental Health Insurance Reform Task Force, a national coalition uniting providers and advocates to challenge unethical insurance practices and expand access to care.Nicole uses her sacred no to confront systems corrupted by profit and extraction, and channels her anger about power over greed by advocating for mutuality, respectful systematic changes with bold and genuine compassion. She is developing the People’s Solidarity Fund Healthcare Cooperative, a community-led alternative to traditional for-profit insurance, designed to improve collective well-being.Nicole allows "inconvenient" emotions to serve as inner guidance, empowering herself and others through truth-telling, fullness of self, and authentic expression rather than compliance, silence, or forced agreeableness. "When Grace has Teeth" workshop description:Many women are conditioned to believe that safety lies in being pleasant and agreeable, even when it costs them their truth. Sweetness may have been a survival strategy at one time, but survival is not the same as empowerment, authenticity, or wholeness.Sometimes being disagreeable is how we call our power back and get our needs met. Sometimes, being "difficult" is how we look reality straight in the eye and set the temperature to rise to the occasion of what is actually needed to serve the greatest good.Niceness can feel lovely when it is genuine, but it can also suffocate us when it is a costume rather than a choice, or when we no longer recognize the difference between being kind and being hidden or harmed. This interactive workshop walks us through the shadow of “nice” and honors the wisdom of the disagreeable woman.We will explore how a sacred no can enhance self-trust and protect the heart, often revealing a sacred yes. We will honor how softness and strength can coexist.Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is show our teeth and allow our tenderness to become powerful enough to guard what it loves. Sometimes, disruption is exactly what's called for.