Carter Umhau is an artist, therapist, facilitator, and creative mentor, who lives—after many years away—in Washington, DC, the city where she was born.

Carter works at the intersection of healing and creativity, hosting classes and workshops, working one-on-one with clients, and feeling into the edges her own writing and art practices. She is the creator of the upcoming podcast How to Be Alive, which includes the accompanying newsletter by the same name (also upcoming on Substack).

Carter holds a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and a Master’s in Counseling Psychology. She is a licensed mental health counselor in the state of WA, holds graduate certificates in Applied Somatic Jungian Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, and in Analytical Psychology from The Salome Institute, and has devoted countless hours to continuing education in the expressive arts therapies. Carter was the host and editorial producer for The Appetite —a podcast by and for Opal: Food + Body Wisdom—for its first 105 episodes.

She has been hosting creative workshops for over fifteen years, creating curriculum that weaves studio art and creative writing practices into workshops meant to bring you closer to yourself—getting you unstuck and more compassionate toward the specificity of who you are so you can be more present to the world around you. Carter has created poetry workshops; helped doula people’s stories into playwriting; created curriculum for clients in eating disorder treatment to teach creative expression as a means of building shame resilience; and co-founded an improv-based therapeutic dance group from therapists-in-training.

While Carter has been using her own creative practice as an alchemizing force in her own life since she learned to write, Carter’s psychotherapy practice and the workshops she hosts—both online and through community spaces around DC like Bold Fork Books, the Smithsonian, Playhaus, and Femme Fatale— have been the space where she has been supporting others in their own process of presence and transformation for over ten years. She has expertise in disordered eating and body image issues, loves working with creatives that are curious about how their stories show up in the art they are making, and in the art they feel too scared or too stuck to make.