about
Highlights
Xiomara Cervantes-Gómez, PhD
Dr. Xiomara Cervantes-Gómez is a trauma-informed coach and psychotherapist, independent scholar, and advocate whose work reimagines care, ethics, and social practice through the embodied knowledge and survival strategies of trans people of color. Her practice was born from lived experience—shaped by years navigating systemic violence, the intimacy of community healing, and the ongoing work of becoming.
Dr. Cervantes-Gómez brings over a decade of experience in academia and higher education to her work—including teaching at the University of Southern California, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and The University of Chicago. Her research draws from trans of color theory, Black feminist thought, queer of color critique, abolitionist praxis, and liberatory theologies (mujerista, womanist, and queer) to insist on different ways of knowing, relating, and healing. She is the author of Bottoms Up: Queer Mexicanness and Latinx Performance (NYU Press, 2024), a transdisciplinary study of queer embodiment, performance, and sexual politics.
Her independent coaching practice emerges from the same commitments. Today, she works with clients across three areas: individual trauma-informed coaching, sex and relationship coaching, and academic/PhD coaching . Whether supporting someone through transition, grief, intimacy, or intellectual reinvention, her work creates space for grounding, truth-telling, and radical possibility.
Dr. Cervantes-Gómez brings to every session a deep respect for the sacred, the somatic, and the illegible. Her practice is not about fixing or fitting in—but about witnessing, listening, and co-creating new ways to live, love, and liberate.
Current Work
At the center of Dr. Cervantes-Gómez’s current work is the development of a Trans of Color-Informed model of care—a transdisciplinary, praxis-oriented framework that draws from the lived knowledge, survival strategies, and spiritual traditions of trans people of color. Rooted in abolitionist ethics, Black and Brown feminist thought, and decolonial theologies, this work asks: What does care look like outside of systems that pathologize, surveil, or disappear us? And how can we create relational practices that honor refusal, interdependence, and ungovernable life?
This project lives at the intersection of theory and practice. It includes an evolving body of writing, public scholarship, and community-based care strategies, as well as a vision for trauma-informed intervention, assessment, and treatment that resists normative timelines, institutional validation, or respectability. Through this work, she is building a field guide for practitioners, clients, and care workers who are imagining otherwise—who are holding grief, joy, transition, and transformation not as problems to be solved, but as paths to new ways of being.
Whether through one-on-one and group sessions, public writing, or collaborative healing work, Dr. Cervantes-Gómez’s trans of color-informed approach is guided by the belief that survival is sacred.