The Practitioner

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My name is Iliana Espinosa-Ravi (she/her/ella), MSW, MPH, LCSW, CT.

I’m the proud daughter of a Mexican immigrant whose name means comfort and a religious pluralist, peace-and-justice pastor, named after a sibling who barely lived and inspired by my bisabuela, a local healer in her community. I’m a queer, biracial, Spanglish-speaking, flora and fauna-loving, Midwesterner from the working class, therapist, social worker, grief steward, and owner of La Cigarra Counseling LLC. I’m also a person who has navigated her own mental health struggles. It is truly a privilege and an honor to support others as they navigate theirs.

I provide liberation-focused, relational, person-centered therapy to adults of all identities and backgrounds and clinical supervision to students and emerging practitioners. I have 15 years of experience providing community care and emotional support. I received a Master’s of Social Work (MSW) from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2016, a Master’s of Public Health (MPH) in 2017 from the same university, my Illinois state license for clinical social work (LCSW) in 2021, a certificate in death midwifery in 2022, my thanatology certification (CT) for the study of death, dying, and bereavement in 2025, and am a current student of narrative therapy.

SPECIALTIES:

  • Grief and loss

  • Life transitions

  • Anxiety & chronic stress

  • Substance use

  • Depression & low self-esteem

  • Relationship difficulties of all kinds, including loneliness, toxic and abusive experiences

  • Identity navigation around biracial/multiculturalism, class, spirituality, gender and sexual diversity, and giftedness

  • Caregiver fatigue  

  • Discrimination and power imbalance experience processing

My approach is informal, eclectic, and intersectional. I am guided by values of transparency, autonomy, and choice, and inclusivity of all bodies, abilities, presentations, and brains. My role is to serve as a supportive collaborator as people work to integrate their experience into something meaningful and manageable. Humor is also very much welcome, and I will invite the funny, otherwise quirky parts of ourselves into the space we co-create. Additional frameworks that inform how I practice include third-world feminist, social justice, and post-structuralist perspectives, harm reduction, and mad liberation.

Two black cats lying on a bed with a cream-colored quilt.

Here are my therapy cats that may join us in session if meeting virtually!

Black and white cat sitting on a black cushion on a round wooden chair in a room with bookshelves and framed pictures.
A close-up of a cicada emerging from its exoskeleton on a thin tree branch, with a green background.

The Name

La Cigarra Counseling is named in honor of the cicada, a symbol of renewal, rebirth, and transformation. Cicadas are known for their unique life cycles, vivacious singing, extensive hibernation patterns, and emergence from the roots of our earth. I find great inspiration in the numerous lessons Madre Tierra has to offer us and believe there is much we can draw upon for our own interpersonal journeys of change, our connections to one another, and from our various encounters with life and death. Like the cicada that molts its skin to emerge anew, we too can peel back layers of ourselves in order to reveal new parts. We, too, can shed and be remade.