I grew up in Albania, a small forgotten country nestled between the cool kids like Italy and Greece. I benefited from the beautiful mediterranean climate, but suffered from the authoritarian culture of an eastern European country whose dictatorship reign ended the year I was born.
The dictatorship, however, was very much alive in my home.

My mother passed away when I was too young to remember her and too small to understand. My father was authoritative, scary, and protective. I remember this part of my childhood as positive, even though I learned early how to be what others needed me to be.
A good girl.

My story of not belonging began when I moved to Canada at thirteen.

Without much feminine guidance, outside of a controlling father trying to play mother and father and a “stepmother” that mostly wished me away, I learned not to rely on my family for nurturance. 
I became hyper independent.
Malleable on command.
Lying became my greatest resource and my diary my closest friend.

My internalization became simple and brutal: what’s wrong with me.

As long as i didn’t have the courage to stand up to my father, he continued to dictate my life. Business school.
Fancy university.
Big tech job.

Meanwhile, I was soothing the pain of not being myself by seeking love from men, connection from partying, and joy from drugs.

At home, I played the perfect daughter.
This went on for almost a year.

There’s a saying in Albanian:

Lies have short legs. They can’t take you very far.

My perfect persona collapsed when I was laid off, thirty thousand dollars in debt, and unable to live within my means.
My father found out.
I was found out.

In the debris, I asked myself for the first time what I might want outside of what he had chosen for me.

That’s when I turned toward psychotherapy.

I was already spending every free moment diving into the human psyche, trying to make it all make sense. People often told me, within minutes of meeting me, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” It felt like a clue.

I knew I wanted to work with couples. Other practitioners would always ask me, puzzled “WHY!?” as in “why-would-you-subject-yourself-to-such-a-thing”.

Romantic love and long term partnership are our greatest test and teacher.

A couple is a system.
Really, it’s two systems colliding and creating a third ecosystem: Me. You. Us.

We are relational beings.
The health of our life is in direct proportion to the health of our relationships.

Beyond that, you - yourself are comprised of an inner world of parts that are all, drumroll please, in relation to each other.

Individual empowerment and personal development is all well and good.

...but it is not enough.

The next stage of your evolution is hidden inside the person you call your partner.

Are you ready to discover that?