Mia de Bethune is an artist and art psychotherapist with a private practice in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. She is also a Somatic Experiencing practitioner with a certificate of expertise in child and adolescent work from the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Before becoming a therapist she was a reiki healing practitioner and has master certification in the Usui/Tibetan, Holy Fire® Karuna® and Transcendental reiki traditions. She holds sessions and trainings online for all three. She is currently a PhD student in the Lesley University Expressive Arts Therapy Program, where she will do research on the intersection of somatic psychology and art therapy and the changing dynamics of tele-art therapy. She has worked with adolescents in residential treatment and foster care in the NY metropolitan area since 2001, for the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services and The Children’s Village residential treatment center. Her experience includes work with juvenile sex offenders, severe learning disabilities, sexual and emotional trauma, loss and bereavement for children and families, and support for those at the end of life. She is also a certified MARI practitioner, allowing her to use the mandala/Jungian based art therapy assessment. Her paper “Giving the Gift of the Transitional Object”, co-authored with Kelly Linhardt, was presented at the national art therapy conference in Cleveland in 2008, and her review of the film “Writer of O” was published in the 2010 AATA Journal. "Giving the Gift..." was later published in 2019 as "Cultivating Resilience Through Creative Altruism With Institutionalized Youth in Foster Care" in the volume "Art Therapy Practices for Resilient Youth." She is the art therapy consultant for the board of Saori Arts NYC, a non-profit that brings weaving to differently abled individuals, and has served on boards of RiverArts, the Hastings Co-op Nursery School, and Grace Episcopal Church, Hastings, NY. Mia has presented to numerous groups including the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, The Westchester Group Psychotherapy Association, the Westchester Creative Arts Therapy Group, the Andrus Children’s Home Psychology Training Program, and the Fondation Orient/Occident in Rabat, Morocco. She was named a 2012 Gurfein Fellow at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute for an unpublished fictional work and was twice an artist in residence at The Catwalk Institute in 2014 and 2015. Her artistic works, including oil and encaustic painting, pastels, and mixed media fiber arts, have been shown extensively in the tristate area since 1995, most recently at the Works on Paper Show at Pier 19 in NYC, Prince Street Gallery in NYC, the Riverfront Gallery in Yonkers, NY, and the b j spoke Gallery on Long Island. She is a current member of the Upstream Gallery and a former member of the Pen & Brush Society in NYC and the Blue Door Gallery Association in Yonkers, NY.