About Sara Champie, LCSW
Why I do what I do, and why I’m for you.
About Me
My work focuses on people navigating illness, genetic risk, and life-altering medical decisions—often while carrying significant responsibility in their professional or family lives.
I lost my mother to ovarian cancer when I was 10, but it wasn’t until my diagnosis with BRCA1 at 30 that I really started to grapple with how hereditary cancer risk would affect every aspect of my life. From the way the diagnosis impacted my marriage, to when and how to have children, decisions about which potential prophylactic surgeries… And through it all: how to self-advocate and stay connected to my own intuition rather than reacting to other people’s fear.
That genetic testing came when I was in the middle of my clinical career in the foster care and probation systems in Santa Rosa, California. I was working with children and families impacted by abuse, neglect, attachment disruption, and intergenerational trauma. These environments require clear judgment, emotional steadiness, and the ability to work effectively inside high-stress systems.
I later worked for several years in hospice and end-of-life care. In that role, I supported individuals in their final months, weeks, and days, as well as the partners, children, and families anticipating loss. This work involved intensive grief counseling, family systems support, and ongoing collaboration with medical teams.
It also demanded comfort with reality as it is. Including illness. Including death. Including the absolute necessity of dark humor.
In 2019, I completed advanced training in the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) and opened my private practice that same year. I later became a NARM Master Therapist and I continue ongoing training in trauma treatment, somatic psychotherapy, and neurofeedback.
I am a queer parent of two children, which means I am intimately familiar with how medical decisions intersect with caregiving, partnership, identity, and the pressure to stay functional for other people—even when things feel unstable internally. I understand how much responsibility parents and primary caregivers carry, and how little space there often is to fall apart.
Why I Do This Work
I believe we are living in an epidemic of disconnection — especially when it comes to our bodies and emotions during times of stress and medical decision-making.
We are medicalized and ushered through life-altering choices, often necessarily and quickly. We are praised for resilience. And then we are expected to move on.
Meanwhile, many people quietly carry anxiety, dissociation — that feeling of being alien in your own skin — and unresolved grief long after the visible crisis has passed.
Creating depthful space to reconnect with those layers is not just my professional focus. It is personal. Recognizing the complexity of this journey continues to shape my own healing, and I have seen the intrinsic hope that emerges when people reconnect with their own humanity — and with the humanity of others.
Bachelor’s of Science in Human Development, UC Davis
Master of Social Work, emphasis in serving indigenous communities, Humboldt State University
Certified Master Therapist in the Neuro Affective Relational Model (NARM), a modality for treating complex and developmental trauma
Certified in InfraSlow Neurofeedback
Experience as Lead Clinician working within the Unconditional Care model, treating families who have experienced developmental trauma
Trained as a Trainer in Unconditional PRIDE, a program for serving LGBTQ+ youth
Trained as a Trainer in Motivational Interviewing
Hospice grief training in William Worden’s Four Tasks of Grief
9 month initiation program in Ancestral Wisdoms: grief ritual facilitation, nature therapy
Wilderness First Responder, nature guide, eco-psychology student