Our Story

In 2008-2009, two local psychologists, Joel Guarna and Elizabeth Kubik, held several introductory ACT workshops in Portland. Several attendees were eager to engage and we held our first meeting in the conference room at MMC Family Practice clinic at 272 Congress Street in Portland in October 2009. The group was multidisciplinary from the start, including physicians, social workers, psychologists and, eventually, other counselors (e.g., LADCs, LCPCs). The ACT Peer Consultation Group has met monthly, with few interruptions, since then. The group has tried various formats over the years, eventually settling into the open community group that it is today.

Joel and Teresa Valliere, an early member since 2010, held numerous ACT trainings around Maine in the intervening years, helping to draw additional members into the fold. In 2012, the first of two ACT Study Groups began to meet, exploring different learning formats. In 2014, members of the community formed the Evolution Science and Behavior (EvoS) book club to broaden our study of contextual-behavioral principles and the deep factors influencing how humans thrive and suffer. Later in 2014, Teresa, through sheer force of creative will, organized our first community retreat on Cushing Island. The retreat was a resounding success and has remained a rich and fulfilling annual tradition, permitting community members to connect and become closer, deepen their practices, and to experiment with facilitating experiential exercises and presentations with one another.

While we started referring to our community as “SMACT” no later than 2016, members began to push toward formal organization as a nonprofit, the Southern Maine ACT community (SMACT), including selection of board officers and our first president, Beth Eilers, in 2019-2020.