hey from Liana 🙋🏾♀️
This newsletter is a new endeavor that we have been hard at work on for some time. There are some important announcements here and keep reading for a short piece I wrote about Joy and Resistance.
Thanks for being here and taking interest in your own communities needs by focusing on the foundations; ya-DAMN-self! 🥰
Liana Maneese, LPC
Founder and Clinical Director of TC
Table of Contents
Artwork from one of our fav children’s books,
“A Flag for Juneteenth” by Kim Taylor
What Juneteenth teaches us about joy, freedom delayed, and our bodies:
We often say therapy is about healing — but healing from what, exactly?
Today, on Juneteenth, we remember that even freedom has been delayed.
On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas — two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation — to inform enslaved Black people that they were “free.” That delay wasn’t a miscommunication. It was enforced. Maintained. Lived through.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re waiting for the world to catch up with your truth, you know something of this delay.
The body remembers what policy forgets. Therapy — especially liberation-centered therapy — is about creating space for that remembering. For celebrating even when the systems aren’t fixed. For grieving what still isn’t right.
We celebrate Juneteenth in joy. In food. In laughter. In dance. But know this, more than anything the fight DOES go on and the joy only ever truly felt for those who know in their souls that freedom– ALL of our freedom– is intertwined and collective.
And we also hold space for the grief and vigilance that still lingers.
Don’t get it twisted: freedom is still delayed.
But being joyful is the only sustainable way of doing this staying on the path.
🎵 Artist of the Week: Nezza
Over the weekend, singer Vanessa Hernández (aka Nezza) stood at center field in Dodger Stadium — and made a choice.
She’d been asked to sing the U.S. national anthem. She planned to do it en español.
Before the performance, Dodgers staff pulled her aside:
“We are going to do the song in English today, so I don’t know if that wasn’t translated – er, communicated.” 😑
Nezza performed El Pendón Estrellado — the Spanish version of the Star-Spangled Banner, officially commissioned by the U.S. government in 1945.
“I’ve sang the national anthem many times in my life, but today I could not. I’m sorry … I just could not believe, when she walked in and told me ‘No,’ but I just felt like I needed to do it, para mi gente.
My parents are immigrants. They’ve been citizens my whole life at this point, they got documented really early, but I just can’t imagine them being ripped away from me, even at this age, let alone a little kid. Like, what are we doing?”
What are we doing?
That question belongs in every room — therapy rooms included.
This week, let Nezza’s courage remind us that freedom is not granted — it’s insisted on. Sung for. Stood up for. In every language.
Juneteenth REMINDER Call to Action WE ARE STILL NOW RESISTING a Fascist Police State!!!
This is not all necessary but it’s here. . . . in case you were looking.
Show Up
Attend local actions against ICE raids, police violence, and state repression. Bring essentials and protest with care.
Organize & Connect
Join mutual aid networks, legal support teams, and community de-escalation groups.
Share trusted resources (Know Your Rights, medic/legal hotline numbers).
Hold Power to Account
Demand elected officials defund ICE, demilitarize police, pass the BREATHE Act, and uphold true Juneteenth justice.
Flood their phones, RSVP to town halls, show up when they’re in your district.
Protect Each Other
Support supplies for folks at risk: bail funds, medical/trained legal observers, mental health check-ins.
Amplify #SayHerName voices—naming those erased by state violence Sustain the Momentum
Commit to long-term resistance—not symbolic gestures. Demand reparations, systemic transformation, abolition of oppressive forces.
BIPOC Healers Mixer 01 At TC Was Beautiful 💓
Not sure if the energy could ever be bad when this many healers and practitioners enter the same space lol.
Reiki, sound, meditators, massage therapists, yogis, artists, herbalists, we had an amazing time connecting with people who do the hard work of creating and holding space for people’s physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Be on the look out for the next edition!
📸: Lo Nakamura
Our very first BIPOC Healers mixer hosted at our office in Shadyside.
TC is Hiring Inclusive Therapists 💫
Want to work with your ideal clients AND work at a black, latina, woman owned practice who understands your reality?
We’re building a team of licensed therapists (LPCs, LCSWs, LMFTs) in Pennsylvania who are:
Burned out on burnout culture
Done with rigid, Eurocentric clinical models
Ready to help people, your people feel seen and feel free
We’re a Black woman-owned group practice that centers liberation — not assimilation.
Bring your full self. (Remote roles available)
Liana on Oppression, Holding on to Joy, and Staying the Course
A Formal Intro w/ TC Founder, Liana Maneese
Hi, my name is Liana. I’ve been waiting a long time to make this connection with you. I’m so grateful to finally have the space to share more consistently—the love notes I’ve been scribbling in notebooks for years, written with you in mind. Because you are the reason I am here. You are why I’m alive. You are my purpose.
We are living through a time that asks everything of us—and somehow, even more from some. Social media exposes us to levels of violence once only imaginable. And while that visibility can be a powerful tool, our brains and bodies were never meant to absorb this much pain, this constantly. And yet we’re still expected to carry it all, quietly.
But what we hold onto doesn’t just shape our personal reality—it shapes the collective reality of our communities, too. And what we learn to release—beliefs, thoughts, stories—creates possibility. It opens up space for the joy that true imagination brings. Letting go invites the courage to grow and the bravery to protect each other. It calls on us to embody a kind of compassion that doesn’t vanish when things get hard—the kind that stays.
Liberation is not a destination. It’s a daily practice. One that asks for tenderness, for imagination, and for the revolutionary act of becoming—and becoming again. At Transitional Characters, we don’t separate therapy from liberation. Mental health is not an accessory to change—it is the change. To feel, to rage, to rest, to dream in full color—this is the resistance. This is how we grow. This is power.
Traditional therapy might ask you to fix yourself. Liberation psychology asks you to remember yourself—in context. With your people. With your history. With your possibilities. It moves us from isolation to interdependence. It reminds us that healing is communal. That wholeness isn’t just personal—it’s political, ancestral, and wildly tender.
So welcome. Whether you are grieving, growing, unraveling, or reimagining—there is space for you here.
Onward with gratitude and rage,
Liana
Also a reminder to go check out our TC playlist on Spotify curated by Dominique Brock
New website, same community-first approach.
We’ve got some big updates to our website! So if you were looking for a therapist, or want to get to know more about our services, and clinicians, click the image above!
A Final Note
No matter the current state of things..
“There is a certain peace that comes with knowing less — and choosing better.”
Transitional Characters
therapy for your humanity, community for your sanity.