You grew up translating. Sometimes literally, sometimes just constantly reading two sets of rules, two sets of expectations, two versions of who you were supposed to be. Maybe you became the responsible one, the cultural bridge, the kid who handled the paperwork and the phone calls. You got good at it. And somewhere in all that adapting, your own needs got quiet.

This can show up in adulthood as guilt when you want something different than what your family imagined, resentment you feel ashamed of, difficulty making decisions without an audience of expectations in your head, or homesickness for a place that may not exist the way you remember it. It can also show up in your body: the tension of code-switching all day, the fatigue of never being fully off duty.

In our work together, you don't have to explain the basics. We'll look at which patterns helped you survive and which ones are costing you now, work through the grief and loyalty conflicts that come with building a life your family didn't script, and practice hearing your own preferences again. As an immigrant myself, I know this terrain from the inside, and I also offer sessions in Russian if that's the language some of your experience lives in.

You've spent years monitoring yourself. Watching your tone, your face, your timing, rehearsing conversations, recovering in private from days that everyone else seemed to handle fine. Eventually the energy for all that performing runs out, and when it does, it can feel like something is deeply wrong with you. There's a simpler explanation: you've been doing double the work for a very long time, and you're exhausted.

I work with neurodivergent teens and adults, including people exploring a late diagnosis or self-identification, which often brings its own tangle of relief, grief, and re-reading your entire history through a new lens. In sessions, we might work on understanding your actual sensory and social needs rather than the ones you've been performing, unlearning the self-criticism that built up from years of trying harder at things that were genuinely harder for you, and making concrete changes to how you work, rest, and relate so your life demands less constant self-management.

As a neurodivergent person, I bring lived familiarity with masking and unmasking, and a decade of experience in schools working with neurodivergent kids and the systems around them. I'm not interested in making you more convincing at seeming fine. I want to help you need the performance less.

Some losses come with rituals, casseroles, and time off work. Others you're expected to get over quietly. The death of a pet who was family. A homeland you left, or that changed beyond recognition while you were gone. An estranged parent. A friendship that ended without a funeral. The version of your life you had to let go of when a diagnosis, a coming out, or a choice changed everything.

When a loss goes unrecognized by the people around you, the grief doesn't shrink to match. It often gets heavier, because you're carrying it alone and second-guessing whether you're even allowed to feel it. That self-doubt on top of the sorrow is its own kind of pain.

In our work together, you don't have to justify the size of your loss or apologize for still feeling it. We'll name what was actually lost, including the losses inside the loss, like routines, identity, an imagined future. We'll make room for feelings that contradict each other, and figure out how you carry this forward in a way that honors what it meant. Grief work with me isn't about getting over anything. It's about no longer having to grieve in hiding.

Decisions and experiences around reproduction carry a weight of stigma, silence, and other people's opinions that nobody should have to hold alone. Whatever brought you here, whether it's a decision you're facing, one you've already made, or an experience you're still processing, I offer nonjudgmental support without an agenda.

This is a space where you can say the complicated things out loud: relief and grief at the same time, certainty and doubt, anger at having to carry any of it in silence. We can work through the decision itself if you're in the middle of one, process what you've been through if you're on the other side, or untangle how it's affecting your relationships, your body, and your sense of yourself.

You won't have to manage my reactions or perform a feeling you don't have. My only agenda is that you get to move through this with support instead of alone.