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Growing up in the South Jamaica projects of New York City, amidst the noise and the hustle, where I learned that relationships are not just important but vital for human survival. Watching my single mother, battling her own relationship demons, I understood that our biological wiring pushes us towards relational connections, an insight that begs the question: If we are inherently drawn to form bonds, why aren't we taught about relationships just like we are taught about social norms? This dichotomy deeply troubled me and fostered my drive to help others understand relationship dynamics.
I grew up feeling invisible within my own family, taking care of my mother while she battled with illness, and grappling with my biological father's rejection. Each chapter added layers of complexity to my understanding of relationships. I had great training for being miserable on the inside and smiling on the outside. I was a product of my upbringing and a faulty one at that. The dysfunction that surrounded me was overwhelmingly disguised as love. Through the lens of my experiences, I've come to recognize the intricate yet delicate dance of relationship dynamics and the undeniable truth that relationships are complex yet strangely binding.
Although the dysfunctional family dynamics existed well before my mom passed away, she did her best to protect us from it. But that protection ended on June 26, when my beloved mother closed her eyes for the last time. This is when everything in my life began to shift. I witnessed distant relationships healed then immediately broken again, toxicity was rampant and my 14 year old self was in the midst of what felt like an emotional war. I learned then, that love comes with conditions, manipulation is an occupation of the selfish, abuse is often masked as love, and rejection is synonymous with redirection.
I was too young and immature to realize that the decisions I’d made would reverberate for years to come. Throughout my teens and well into my adult life, I didn’t feel loved, and, consequently, I never felt as though I was enough for anyone. Every relationship around me started to crumble. So I decided that I needed therapy. Sitting in front of the therapist with tears rolling down my face, I begged her to help heal me. I felt I was too damaged and too broken to be in a relationship. My desire and determination to learn how to have healthy relationships took over my every thought and action.
After years of observing my own family as a living case study, I maintained a deep yearning to learn more about the complexities of relationship dynamics. At first, I just wanted to help others, but the more I delved into psychology during my college years, the more I realized I was truly looking for answers to the questions I’d found burning growing up: How can someone who says they love you hurt you so deeply? What does healing look like? And how do the scars of past hurts shape our future connections?
These questions born from my early family relationships are what inspired me to become a psychologist specializing in Trauma and Marriage & Family Therapy. It was a journey marked by years of academic rigor, deep introspection, and scholarly research, in order to fully understand the complexity of my own family dynamics, and how it negatively affected the way I learned about relationships.
I spent a great deal of time investigating how we learn about relationships. I found myself questioning the very foundations of what I had been taught and searching for a deeper understanding of how to truly serve and make a life-changing impact on others.
I went to the streets of New York City, arguably the most diverse city in the United States. I spent five days scrounging Midtown Manhattan and asked over a thousand strangers this profound question: Who taught you about relationships? No one I talked to said they were explicitly taught how to have a healthy relationship. And I mean no one. I was absolutely dumbfounded by the results.
This leaves us to unconsciously rely on what we see and hear as a kind of barometer for our adult relationships. That brings us to an outstanding yet paramount question, one that truly serves as a foundation for understanding why we do what we do, believe what we believe, and act the way we act in relationships: Who taught you that?
That is the question that put me on the path to an incredible mission: To help individuals enhance their relationship skills and help couples build healthy relationships.
by leading them on a journey to build healthy relationships. The journey starts by examining how we unconsciously replicate negative relationship patterns we've observed – through family, friends, social media, and Television – which perpetuate a cycle of trauma and dysfunction. Then, we began the process of building a new, strong relationship foundation – a partnership defined by strength, understanding, and genuine connection.
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