Digame: Dr. Veroshk Williams Talks Fusing Astrology with Psychology

Digame is a monthly series featuring prominent Latinx leaders, activists, entrepreneurs, and public figures uplifting the community and making a difference

March 31, 2021 - 18:18

Digame is a monthly series featuring prominent Latinx leaders, activists, entrepreneurs, and public figures uplifting the community and making a difference.

Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Dr. Veroshk Williams is a psychologist and astrologist who has overcome great obstacles to become one of the most successful women in her industry. At just four years old she lost both of her parents during the peak of the HIV crisis in the 1980s. As a Black Latina, she encountered racism at a young age in addition to marginalization due to the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS at the time. These struggles fueled her desire to dedicate her life to working in mental health and helping her community. Dr. Veroshk earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and later studied astrology for two years in Bogotá, Colombia.

Today she leads Sanacion Infinita Puerto Rico, a multidisciplinary alternative medicine clinic based in San Juan, PR, and New York City. Dr. Veroshk also hosts the podcast AstroTerapia centered on wellness and health journeys. She also curates her candles, rituals, and love sprays, which you can find at her store, ShopVeroshk. She also offers a virtual mental health hub and membership, Membresia Veroshk, that includes a gallery of tools and guidance with astrology and psychology.

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Which Latina(s) have had the greatest impact on your life and why?

There are two. My grandmother Ana Marta and my wife, Carmen Guerrero Perez.

My grandmother had the greatest pain known to human life which is losing her daughter (my mother); to HIV in the midst of when HIV had the greatest stigma. She went through that and found the strength to raise me and guide me out of my own mourning process despite hers. She was key in my spiritual, emotional, and scientific interests.

And my wife, Carmen Guerrero Perez. Because she is the noblest person and active environmentalist I know in the Caribbean. She has achieved so much for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. She is the first woman (and queer) to become Director of the EPA Caribbean Environmental Protection Division, she currently does a great job there.

If you had a superpower, what would it be?

To make result-oriented mental health and wellness accessible to everyone. And to erase the stigma to mental health so that everyone is open to it. We should all be able to achieve our well-being.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

My grandmother was my own personal guru. She always had the best advice. I remember when I was feeling like I needed to connect with my spirituality and she told me: “Always keep striving for what you feel you need, even if you don’t understand the why”.

What would you title the autobiography of your life?

An Orphan Afro Latina: From suffering to happiness and finding the path to help others achieve wellbeing

What was the first thing you bought with your own money?

I started working when I was 16 years old. I remember the first thing I bought was chipping in and helping my grandmother pay for a plane ticket for a summer internship I got with NASA at Cornell University to study brain anatomy on birds and its relations to the human brain and behavior.

What do you wish more people understood about what you do?

I would love for people to understand that astrology is science and is a fundamental tool in the process of achieving mental health and wellness. In addition, that psychology does work and provides results if done in the right way which is honoring the process and going deep into the mind and consciousness.

What motivates you?

Mental health, human science, and wellness motivate me. All I do professionally and personally is to provide it to myself, my loved ones, my clients, and the people that visit my clinics.

How did you end up on the professional path you’re on now?

My journey started at a very young age. I was an orphan at the age of 4 and lost both my parents to HIV in the 1980s. This mourning process awakened my curiosity for understanding the human relationship with suffering. This is how I was very mindful of emotions at a young age. I ended studying psychology in college. In regards to astrology, it found me. Many years ago, I had a reading done in which the astrologer told me I was going to become an astrologer. This happened at a moment where I was frustrated with psychology because I knew a lot was lacking in order to really help people obtain results. That’s how I went to Bogotá, Colombia, and studied astrology. Since then, I knew I was going to fuse both to help others achieve mental health in my own clinic.

What is your greatest professional achievement so far? Personal achievement?

Professional: Having a great education was very important and being able to attend Cornell University with a full scholarship will always bring warmth to my heart. In addition, to be able to serve around 2,000 individual consultations yearly to this day is the most fulfilling and humbling.

Personal: Overcoming all the pain from losing my parents while being a 4-year-old by achieving emotional and spiritual wellness. I am happy and when I was younger, I never thought this would be possible for me.

What is a goal you have that you haven’t accomplished yet and what are you doing to get closer to accomplishing it?

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I would love to have more of my clinics: Sanacion Infinita, a multidisciplinary mental health clinic, in other locations so that we could help more people attain their mental health and wellbeing from this special model: the fusion of astrology, clinical psychology, and other health-related fields. Right now, I am working on this by structuring our company, doing corporate proposals, maximizing what already works on our business structure, staying active on social media, and using my voice to advocate about mental health everywhere I go.