“The fact that commercial culture always panders to the lowest common denominator of awareness and taste should not stop us in our personal revolution to become real human beings.”
― Martin Prechtel, The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise

My name is Maryam...

My name is Maryam. I am a therapist and clinical social worker by training and it's also a part of my practice to share who I come from and the relationships that define me. I have two parents who fell in love from different sides of the planet and who still hold it down for one another, and hold it down for me in a pinch. I have three younger siblings, a wildly supportive partner and a pup who has taught me to earn her trust. My Phupo and Dadi guide me towards alignment if I listen, and my deepest sense of community has come when individualism wasn't sustainable for me anymore and playing the capitalistic game was eating at my core.

As a human who has been trained as a psychotherapist, I can hold space for the deeper layers and for the tending that needs to happen when we are trying to make meaningful change. We are all impacted by the systems that have contorted our bodies and minds for generations, cutting us off from our relationship to land, to nature and to each other. My greatest intention in my work is to be a part of the transformation we need to create within and between us so that we can rejoin our lineages with the collective.

As a therapist, I have been most influenced by these frameworks:

Decolonizing Therapy for Black Folks/Therapy that Liberates

Internal Family Systems

Intimacy From the Inside Out

I am always impacted by the mentorship and guidance of Tarell Kyles and Jen Lemen, two humans who have consistently loved me, and gently pulled me into deeper ways of being in relationship and community.

All Things Money

All Things Money is a project I'm launching as a therapist and peer working my relationship with money. It's one-on-one deep somatic conversations with me for twelve weeks around All Things Money. This offering is for folks with access to wealth with difficult relationships to money while also holding values and ideals that may include sharing, redistribution and reparations.

I come to this offering as someone who is curious about my relationship with money and how it shows up within my family system, and in the relationships I care about the most. I realize my ideologies around sharing, around moving money, around redistribution and reparations are often in stark contrast with how my body has been and continues to be conditioned to hold onto money at all costs. The more I talk about money, the more I contend with how much shame and guilt and secrecy there is hidden in the crevices of our psyches that keeps money as a taboo topic. I also have noticed that for me, money carries an ancestral burden that has traveled through my lineage that has been waiting to tended to.

The more I engage in this work, I am settling into a belief that healing doesn't come from following a binary that either says we should either bulldoze our bodies for the sake of doing what's "right" or do what we've always done, that is most comfortable, that doesn't move the dial or shift or change or transform. As someone trained to tend to what's emerging in our bodies, I can hold space for the nuance, for the in-between, for finding our edges, expanding them, and then coming back to a soft place to land, only to return to our edges tomorrow.

If this work interests you, you can read more about it here.

If you're interested in learning more, email me for a consultation. Sessions begin in 2023.

If you need help finding a therapist...

While I am not taking on folks for individual psychotherapy right now, there are so many folks and organizations out there that I highly recommend:

Therapy the Liberates directory

Internal Family Systems directory

Intimacy from the Inside Out directory (for couples)

The Liberated Us

NYC Affirmative

For more resources like this, my partner Jules Perkel, LCSW has a fantastic resource page on her website to check out.

Finding a therapist right now is very challenging, and on top of that, the right fit even more so, so if you're having trouble locating folks with openings, please reach out to me and I'll use all of my connections and networks to provide you with some options.

Maryam Sajed, LCSW

:: Deep Inquiry and Exploration::

(e) :: MaryamSajedLCSW@gmail.com

(p) :: 484-725-9200