Nicole Paterson is an advanced-year MSW candidate at Stony Brook University with more than a decade of experience across health and human services, public health, nonprofit leadership, and community-based care. Her work is grounded in health equity and an understanding that our well-being cannot be separated from the environments, relationships, identities, and systems that shape our lives.

Throughout her career, Nicole has worked alongside individuals and communities navigating mental health challenges and barriers to care. Her approach is trauma-informed, anti-oppressive, and rooted in the belief that people are the experts in their own lives. Nicole approaches each person within the context of their lived experience, supporting them as they define and navigate healing on their own terms.

Nicole is particularly drawn to working with grief and loss, including pregnancy loss, stillbirth, and infant loss, as well as major life transitions, relationship and family challenges, religious trauma, and questions of identity and belonging. She recognizes that loss is not always clear or easily named. Sometimes we grieve a person, a relationship, an identity, a belief, a future, or a version of our lives that we thought we would have.

As a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT 200), Nicole brings a holistic, mind-body perspective to her work and recognizes that healing can involve more than what happens through words alone. At Root Salve, Nicole hopes to create a space that is empathetic, affirming, and collaborative. You do not need to have the right words or know exactly what you need. Growth does not have to mean becoming more productive, accomplished, or resilient. ometimes growth means grieving. Sometimes it means slowing down, setting boundaries, letting go, or learning to meet yourself differently.

Nicole sees her role as walking alongside you with curiosity and compassion, while honoring that the direction you choose, the pace you move, and what healing looks like are entirely yours.