Community Week Host Spotlight: Sonia H.E. Rivas Brings {THE AND} to Wollongong, Australia
As part of the Community Week experience, guests at each gathering will write their own questions, with the best of them coming together to form a brand-new {THE AND} deck, created entirely by the community. One of those hosts is Sonia Houria Essia Rivas.
The Skin Deep is kicking off its first-ever Community Week, a global series of in-person gatherings hosted by everyday community-builders, from living rooms to local coffee shops, all using {THE AND} card game to spark honest, meaningful conversation. Around the world, hosts are opening their doors (and their favorite local spots) to bring people together in real life, face to face, no screens required.
As part of the Community Week experience, guests at each gathering will write their own questions, with the best of them coming together to form a brand-new {THE AND} deck, created entirely by the community.
One of those hosts is Sonia Houria Essia Rivas, founder of Women Make Waves and creator of the Houria Method, based in Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
Who Is Sonia
Sonia is a nervous system and emotional intelligence coach, keynote speaker, and breathwork facilitator, and hosts the podcast Curious With Sonia. But her path here wasn't a straight line. She came to this work from an unlikely place: trained as an international commercial lawyer, taught to lead with her head and ignore her body and emotions entirely.
What changed everything was a surf injury that stopped her in her tracks, forcing her into stillness, and into the work of reconnecting with herself after years of emotional and physical dissociation. That injury ultimately brought her back to what she loves most: making friends and deep connections, adventuring, books, and cultures.
Raised between France, Tunisia, and Algeria before moving to Australia at 29, Sonia carries her middle name, Houria, her grandmother's name too, as something close to a mission statement. It means "free woman" in Arabic, and she says it's infused in her spirit.
Her work is about building bridges: between science and ancestral wisdom, the head and the body, the heart and the spirit, where we come from and where we're going. Honoring culture and our shared humanity sits at the center of it all.
"So much of what we need to feel safe and whole was already known by those who came before us," Sonia shared. "Part of my work is carrying that forward rather than leaving it behind."
What Sonia's Community Week Gathering Will Look Like
For Community Week, Sonia is planning a low-key get-together at her favorite local coffee shop, owned by people she describes as amazing connectors in their own right, and passionate about their work. The audience will be mostly women aged 35–50, many of them mothers, with kids welcome too.
Sonia will open the gathering with a grounding breath work meditation, followed by a round of mini story-sharing to break the ice, before easing the group into {THE AND} card deck. Her goal: create new connections for people who might feel isolated or like community is lacking in their lives, while supporting a small local business along the way.
For Sonia, bringing people together like this, and creating a safe space where people can truly open up, is exactly the kind of work she loves most.
Why Real, In-Person Community Matters
Sonia's hope for the night is simple: an uplifting time, and new friends. In a world that so often pulls people apart, she sees gatherings like this as a small but real act of resistance, healing ourselves, healing each other, and doing it as a team.
That's the same spirit behind Community Week itself: proof that real connection happens best face to face, card by card, conversation by conversation, and that anyone, anywhere, can be the one to bring people together.
What's Next for Sonia
Alongside her coaching and speaking work, Sonia is currently developing The Sahara Project, a cultural reclamation and conservation initiative built around an expedition across the Sahara, and writing a book that blends biomimicry, self-help, and a decolonizing perspective.
She's also running the Inner Power Mentorship Program through Women Make Waves, where emotional and nervous system regulation meet ancestral wisdom and surf-inspired tools.
And on the days things get quiet? Sonia recently completed a 72-hour water fast, and found that hunger wasn't the hard part. What she missed most was her daily morning ritual: waking up, making a good breakfast and coffee, and stepping outside to enjoy the sun.
"F*** it, I'm doing it! Or, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'll figure it out!" — Sonia H.E. Rivas
How You Can Support Sonia
Follow along with Sonia's work:
- Instagram: @womenmakewaves_
- Instagram: @amazingamazigh_
- Women Make Waves
- Sonia Houria
- The Sahara Project
Want to Host Your Own Gathering?
Community Week is the perfect opportunity to bring people together, old friends, new faces, and everyone in between, around {THE AND}. If Sonia's story resonates with you, we'd love to have you gather your community too.
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