My Story

In every life there is a core force that grounds and guides it. Mine is the capacity to access strength; my own as well as the strengths of others.

I came to this awareness gradually. My initial training as a psychologist began in India, where I was born and lived for 25 years. I then moved to this country and have lived in the Boston area ever since.

I became sensitized to the richness and complexity of a mother’s life from an early age. India is a culture where community is strong, and this exposed me to extremely diverse women on a daily basis.  I grew up with a woman as the Prime Minister of the country, with women like my mother who worked full time as mothers, and with women who were serious career women like my mother-in-law. For every single one of them, their children were their most important source of love.

My biggest school of learning has been the “seeing” of how hard a mother must work to feel she is a “good mother.”  This began with observing my own mother, and has now generalized to every woman I meet. Over time, I learned to “see” the cluelessness about our very real work as mothers. It was initially confusing to see this work judged as “less than” publicly visible work, and it’s stresses labeled as psychological symptoms.

Ultimately, this invisibility and general lack of understanding about a mother’s work led me to push aside received wisdom and create a new lens. I am just as interested in a mother’s daily realities as she goes about her mom work, her worries, her strengths and her supports if any, as I am in her reasons for walking into my office.

New developments in psychology enabled this framework: I owe much to the outstanding scholarship of thoughtful women. My deep grounding in Eastern thought and practices has provided my approach with a base that is rock steady. We are more than what we “do,” and life is a spiritual journey at all times.

I have been a meditator for over forty five years. That practice faltered seriously when I became a mother. My curiosity about the connection, if any, between becoming immersed into the private world of motherhood and the shift in my daily practice led to a period of study. My guiding conviction was that it is valid to be curious about any thing that claims to be normative, claims it is suited for “everyone.”

I emerged with a sensitivity to the  gender based origins of Eastern models of intellectual and spiritual thought. This entire period changed my life, and I applied to go to school for a doctoral degree in psychology. The results of an outstanding education combined with the above taught me to filter all of it through the lived experience of the person who needs to benefit from it: the mother sitting in front of me.