Episode 5 Coffee Chats: Dr. Ramya Matam-Kannan, Psy.D on non-linear paths, identity & culture, caring for BIPOC communities
In this episode of Coffee Chats, Sara talks with Dr. Ramya Matam-Kannan, Psy.D about her non-linear path to working as a therapist at Room to Breathe, how her culture and identity shows up in her work, the impact of growing up in primarily white communities as a person of color, and her goal of helping BIPOC community members receive the care she wishes she had received growing up.
Interested in working with Ramya? Connect with her at ramyamk@roomtobreathechicago.com
Read Ramya’s article for our blog, Selfish Isn’t A Dirty Word.
Interview transcript {edited for clarity}
Sara (she/her): We are recording.
Ramya (she/her): Okay, great! Here we go.
Sara: I am here with Ramya. Dr. Ramya. Almost.
Ramya: Yeah. Yes, I am a doctor because I earned the degree. Working towards licensure.
Sara: Which really doesn't matter to anybody but our insurance company, so we digress. (laughs)
Ramya: Right.
Sara: And Ramya is almost 6 months into practice at Room to Breathe, but has a masters in counseling psychology, a doctorate in clinical psychology. The way we've been connected is through practicum at Malcolm X, under Erica Schweitzer’s guidance, shall we say. And Ramya, you have quite the experience in clinical work. So everything from complex trauma to substance abuse, couples, family. And I think something that's really important to state is all of your identities that you come with. So Asian - South, East Asian?
Ramya: Yeah. I’m South Asian.
Sara: And American.
Ramya: And Indian American, yeah.
Sara: Yeah. So, woman of color, which I think perhaps you are stepping into that identity as a clinician every day a little more.
Ramya: More and more.
Sara: More and more, and we can speak to that. And yeah, we're just here to chat about you and your journey to being a private practice clinician, which probably is more than I'll ever really understand, because you went to school for 7 years. Which is wild.
Ramya: It was a lot of school.
Sara: A lot of school. No more school, one more test.
Ramya: Thank god we’re done. Just one more thing.
Sara: And you are in Virginia.
Ramya: Correct. Yeah, I don't live in Illinois currently, although I did live in Chicago for schooling.
Sara: Right. Yeah.
Ramya: I love Chicago. It feels the most home to me than any other places.
Sara: Oh, will you be back?
Ramya: I miss it. It kind of just depends. I would love to be back, if I could choose I would have been back like yesterday. It really just depends on this transition that my husband and I are in right now, and about his job and his career path. Now that mine’s a little more settled. Never going to say never to moving back to Chicago. But it just depends.
Sara: Okay.
Ramya: Our favorite answer as clinicians, I feel like.
Sara: Yeah, “it depends.” Okay. Well, now, it's your turn to intro yourself. Give us a clip of who you are, what you care about, why you're here.
Ramya: Well, thank you, Sarah, for giving me this platform. I mean. We were just talking a little bit earlier about how you and I don't get to have as many conversations together. So I'm very excited to connect with you on this, too.
Well, like Sarah mentioned, I'm Ramya, I'm originally from Kentucky, and I've moved around. Yeah, I moved around quite a bit for school.
Sara: Where in Kentucky?
Ramya: I'm from Lexington, Kentucky.
Sara: Okay.
Ramya: Yeah. Moved around for school quite a bit. Yes. Did my doctorate in Chicago actually at the same school that Sara graduated from, we found out.
Sara: Adler.
Ramya: Yeah, and let's see, I studied…Adler’s very much a Social Justice School. So that's one of my passions, resources, equity, making sure that everybody has equal resources to be able to access mental health care. I'm also a trauma focused clinician with a background in substance use treatment as well.
Sara: Yes, so. But now you're here.
Ramya: And now I'm here. Yes.
Sara: And we don't ever really get to choose what we work with. But if you were to say 2 or 3 specialties, what would you say?
Ramya: Trauma. I think relationship exploration, dynamics, and that would include like family relationships, friendships, romantic relationships. And then substance use, I would say. I'm very, very interested in getting more knowledge about disordered eating behavior and eating disorders, too. So that's like a private project that I'm working on to educate myself more about that.
Sara: Awesome yes, which is like, I think a finally expanding field where people are taking into consideration social justice and equity and culture.
Ramya: And dismantling diet culture. And encouraging body positivity.
Sara: Yeah.
Ramya: So many layers to that one.
Sara: So many layers that one. So if you could speak to Ramya in her first year in her master's program -
Ramya: Oh, yeah.
Sara: What has changed for you, whether it's perspective, myths. Can you think of like, what's one big thing that you would tell little baby, new to school, grad school, Ramya, that she didn't know that you know now.
Ramya: Yeah. I think I would say to her to not take herself too seriously. And to ease up and be open to exploring her personal self and professional role. I think that's like the one thing that I would want to change about my journey and my past is to ease up and be able to let go of things a little better, and offer myself more grace and kindness. And it's always a work in progress. But I think I mean it's been like 7, 8, 9 years since my first year of grad school now.
But yeah, I think I kind of let, maybe my self doubts, and my own anxieties, lead me a little more than my personality, and who I am, and being settled in that part of myself.
Sara: Totally. Yeah. So I think that it's interesting you say that because as a Psy.D - and this could be my bias of Psy.Ds - But you all are so academic and so well studied, and - but I also have seen your growth in the short months that you've been here from being like, “Oh, no, I don't think I'm ready to do that” to like, “Oh, no, that's who I am, and I can do that, and I can hold space for that person or these, this group of people.” And I think that's kind of a huge part of our field, right? Going back to “it depends” like nothing is super objective, right? So in terms of your social justice background, and your passion for equity, and just your different identities. How do you think that shows up in your work, now?
Ramya: I think it's something that I'm just now starting to step into and feel the most comfortable with. For a long time I felt like I had to put some of my other identities, like being a person of color, being Indian American, being South Asian, I felt like I had to put all of that in a box, which is ironic, because one of the reasons I got into this field was to dismantle any kind of stereotypes or the taboo nature that mental health has in the South Asian community, particularly in the Indian American community.
Sara: Hmm.
Ramya: I got into this field to be able to offer people like me help, because I felt like I didn't always get what I needed. And maybe a part of putting myself into a box, and like not opening it, the part that I was around a lot of primarily white communities. It wasn't until my doctorate program in Chicago, where I was seeing people like me. I was seeing other people of color, where everything felt very much integrated. and I was able to step into the role of - what can I offer, and in all my years of training, so far they were also predominantly white. And not just like no other Indian Americans, but like almost no people of color, to begin with, or just a handful of us. I think this is the first, like here at Room to Breathe, is the first environment where I've been encouraged to openly state that, encouraged to openly seek people like me to offer them help. Which is why I even got into this field in the first place.
Sara: Yeah. I like your analogy of letting yourself out of a box, because I think for so often we say like working in a box, right? And we do in this field, right? I think we're progressively getting out of that. But we've been working in the box of white male clinicians of our textbooks. But working to get yourself out of the box, and how that is actually more beneficial for your clients. That, and especially the clients that you want to work with, which is huge, and I think to speak to what you're saying of like, I think there's still gaps and a lot of lack in… is it education? Is it myth busting? I don't know, in the South Asian culture, especially the Indian American culture, with the whether it's first, second, third generation, immigrant mindset of like, No, you just get up and go and you do it. You make money. So yeah, I think something you're saying is super powerful for maybe, hopefully, future clients to hear of like, how do we get you out of the box that you are living in in your community? Or maybe it's even in your high school, your graduate school, your job, your family, perhaps. Yeah.
Ramya: I think it's super important to be able to reflect and explore yourself. I very much grew up in a setting… My parents are immigrants. My sister and I are first generation American. We're both born here -
Sara: In Lexington, Kentucky! Perhaps it's my bias, but…
Ramya: I mean, growing up was super white. I think what's ironic is the neighborhood that we grew up in was probably 80 to 90% Indian. So the schools had enough diversity. But the teachers were all white. And the education all came from like a white background, right? There was no template of -
Sara: Colonial.
Ramya: Colonial yes, there was no template for how to increase awareness of how to allow people to be who they are. And that's why I use the box analogy. Because, growing up, I very much felt like in school I had to put all these other identities into a box to be able to fit into school, and to be able to fit in with the competitiveness or what teachers expected of me. And then, when I came home, because my parents very much wanted me and my sister to be able to have culture, to be able to embody that culture. That's when I was doing some exploration, and it was confusing. I think most children of immigrants could probably tell you that that is a very awkward, confusing journey, and a lot of that comes from hiding parts of yourself because you feel like you're not okay to be who you are.
I mean, even as far as we've come now since I was in high school I think that's still pretty relevant, and the Indian community, the Indian American community is very much collectivistic in that we don't ask for help from other people. Right? We keep it within the family. We believe in keeping our problems within the 4 walls of our house. Why would you go to a stranger, another person that wouldn't understand to go talk about your problems when you can talk to your parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, whoever.
Sara: Yeah.
Ramya: And so that's the push of sometimes I wish I had someone else to talk to. Sometimes I wish I was able to learn how to advocate for myself at a younger age. Looking back, there are definitely things that I can see now of ways that I needed help, of ways that I wish that was emphasized more in just a - I have my parents. I have my family, and I can talk to them about it. Sometimes it’s hard. The people that try and do the best, and are loving and are doing things out of a caring way still don't know how to give you what you need, and that's a little bit of that, I don't know, cage or box or whatever that i'm trying to shatter of - That has a role, and that is very important in the culture. And there are benefits of going outside of that to get other perspectives. To integrate, maybe, what society expects of you, and what your home life expects of you. That there is a place, and there is a way to do both.
Sara: So then I'm interested in asking you, what did you go to college for?
Ramya: I originally went to college in the hopes to go to medical school, as a lot of people do.
Sara: Same! I don’t know if you knew that, but same.
Ramya: I didn't know that. But yeah, a lot of us therapists end up doing that right? It's also like the Asian thing, like most of us are either doctors or engineers. Probably 95 of us are, right? Well, doctors and engineers, or in the IT computer field. And so I was like, yeah, like I've always had a passion for helping people. I've always wanted to make a difference in my corner of the world, and how I felt like I could do that was to go to medical school. And I went to school in Dayton, Ohio. Just also a very, very white community, right? I am aware of how I sought communities that I was comfortable with, which was the white community. Because I didn't have a framework of what it looks like to be accepted for who I was.
So. I was premed and I was trying to make it work, and I was trying to make it work, and like almost trying to set a square peg into a round hole, like - my relationships weren't fulfilling to me, the environment wasn't really fulfilling to me, the subjects that I was taking weren't fulfilling to me. I was just trying to push forward and doing what I thought I was supposed to do. I don't think it was until the end of my junior year or maybe the beginning of my senior year of college where I was like - I was on track to graduate on time - where it was like “I don’t want to do this.” I checked off all the boxes that you were supposed to check off, or that, like, people had told me I was supposed to check off. What my teachers told me, what my family expected of me. And then I had this moment where I was like - nothing feels right. At what point am I going to decide that this isn't the life that I want for myself, and start living it for myself rather than these boxes that people have told me I need to check off.
I did have an interest in psychology, and I actually had declared a minor in psychology my junior year, most of my electives were psychology classes. Psych 101 class was required. And I loved it. As an undergrad student in Psych 101 we had to help the graduate masters and doctorate students in psychology with their theses and their dissertations, and so we would often volunteer to be subjects in their experiments, in the research. And so I was like, this is so cool. This is actually interesting. And then I would go back to my own lab research, like, investigating fruit flies, and I was like I don't want to stare down the barrel of a microscope for the rest of my life, like, that does not seem fun. So I made the decision that if I wanted to graduate on time I needed to switch my major from like the pre med track to just biology.
Sara: We are so similar!
Ramya: I researched what I needed to pursue a career in psychology. And I took more classes that I needed for my minor, really, and I graduated on time.
Sara: Wow.
Ramya: Yeah. I actually applied for Psy.D’s that time around. But because I switched my major a little too late, I wasn't getting in. And there was one school in small town Missouri that was like “You don't qualify for our Psy.D program. But you do qualify for our master's program. Would you want to do it?” And so that's how I ended up going to get my masters first.
Sara: Got it. In Missouri?
Ramya: In Missouri, in Springfield, Missouri.
Sara: You were, like, stuck in the midwest. Missouri’s the midwest, right?
Ramya: I think so.
Sara: I guess Kentucky is like, kind of the South. Lexington is the south.
Ramya: Yeah, it's like Central Kentucky. So it like really hugs that border of like, deep south. It wasn't deep south, it's like metropolitan south.
Sara: Sure. Yeah, my partners from Louisville.
Ramya: Oh yeah! I didn’t know that, how are we so similar?
Sara: I actually was a psych major/bio minor because I stopped at physics and was like, No, no, no, can't do this. I’m into the social sciences.
Okay. So what was it like telling your family? Because to me it sounds like you were convinced they wanted you to be a doctor.
Ramya: I think I had convinced myself that they wanted me to be a doctor.
Sara: Yes, that’s what it sounds like.
Ramya: It's what I had always said I wanted, even when I was little, right, like I can remember very clearly being 7 or 8 years old, asking for one of those play doctor kits as a kid and turning around the fake stethoscope and giving people like fake vaccines all the time like - that's like who I was as a kid.
I'm also very much a planner. And so that was a plan. That was the only thing that ever seemed interesting to me, that was the only thing that felt tangible to me. My dad's an engineer, and he works with Toyota, so I was around all of that - that didn't seem interesting to me. My mom stayed at home so that way she could take care of me and my sister, which seemed interesting to me. But education was very important in our family. They were like, you need to at least finish college and do a master's degree. So you need to pick what you want to do, and I was like, okay, well, being a doctor sounds great, because that's what I saw on TV. So I convinced myself that that's what they wanted me to do. And so when I told them they were like, okay, is that gonna be extra school? How can we help support you on that?
Sara: Hmm.
Ramya: And I think that's the freedom that I needed because they were like, look, we don't know the school system in America. They didn't go to school here, right? They came here for my dad's job, and ended up staying. They did all their schooling in India.
So they're like - We don't know the school system here. We don't know how all this works, but if this is what you say you want to do, like, make sure it's what you want to do, right? And so I switched. They were like, how can we help you?
I feel like I was at the point where I was late on deadlines, for schools, for essays. They would stay up with me so late, trying to figure out all my essays, and like all of that. So they were very, very supportive. They're wonderful parents. They were great about supporting me in that. I think my extended family had a little bit of a harder sell because of the stigma of mental health and psychology. I think a lot of the stigma is like, “Oh, you talk to crazy people…oh, you're just giving people advice” right, like that's what it had boiled down to. And that's the part that feels not as validating for me. And that's my whole push and wish is that we can scrub the word of mental health and paint it in a better light of - people don't have to live the way they're living if they don't want to. Therapy, and their mental health journey, is about being the best versions of ourselves and showing up as we want to. And giving people the power and autonomy to do it.
Sara: Yeah. Yeah. And healing the parts of us that we're convinced of things that we’re…It's interesting because listening to you talk about that, you went from, “I thought” to “I felt.”
Ramya: I didn’t even notice that.
Sara: But like, I think that's the biggest thing too with mental health and the work that we're doing and the work that you're doing as a therapist, and like, almost like bringing people to the other side, right? Without taking away their cultural identities, right? Because it can be both, and you can have both your religion and your culture and still seek help from a neutral out of the norm of what you are convinced you're supposed to get help from. That's simply just there as a guide to show you like, “Hey, there's this part of you that I'm seeing. Do you know that part yet? Have you talked to her yet?” So yeah, I think it's interesting to hear you talk about that.
But yeah, let's shift into the work you've done this far in private practice and what that's been like in terms of building out your caseload, because I think your caseload has been couples and individuals. Maybe some adolescents.
Ramya: Some adolescents. A couple of younger children. I think it is so interesting when you ask me about my professional journey, and like my private practice journey, because I think that is just as personal for me as like all of the other stuff that we've talked about. It's always been about making mindful choices and making sure that it aligns with my values whether I knew it or not, and a lot of my training and a lot of my journey to get here has been well, what hasn't worked for me? It was never, “This is what I want to do, and I absolutely know that this is the population I want to work with” because I had done that when I thought I wanted to go to medical school and clearly we figured out how that went.
So then it's like keeping your mind open to - all right. I'm just gonna be open to trying anything and everything. And then we're gonna figure it out, and I found that a lot of it was - okay. Well, that didn't work. I did not like that. So we're gonna cross that off the list and move on.
When I first got into the field, I thought I wanted to be a child psychologist. And in my master's program I did my practicum training at a private practice, actually, so that was my first private practice experience. Yeah, of working with children with developmental disorders, learning disorders, intellectual disabilities, autism disorder or autism spectrum disorder, and that's most of the work I did. And while I really enjoyed it, I found that there was something about my vision, about having my own children, and building my own family in the future that was like - I respect the people that do this but i'm not sure that it's aligning with me. Because I want, and I don't have kids yet, but I want to be able to raise my future children in the way that I want to without having dealt with other people's children all the time. Because personally, I think that took a toll on me.
So in my head it almost felt like - well, I either get to be a child psychologist and give up my dream of building a family. Or I get to build my dream of having a family and helping other people in other populations.
Sara: Yeah.
Ramya: And like - shoutout to all child psychologists and therapists out there because you do god's work. Literally. It just wasn't what I needed and what I had envisioned for my life.
And then I got into my doctor program. And my first assessment practicum was in the hospital.
I was like, okay. So I've done private practice. I don't think I really want to work with kids full time. Let's try a hospital because to me that was like, oh, it's stable. You probably get, like, a thick salary, and you get benefits, and like all this other stuff.
And then I noticed how inequitable things were. I noticed how, again, kids and adults and people of color were treated versus how their white counterparts were treated when they're going through a mental health episode, and they ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Noticed how they were treated by the psychologists and psychiatrists. And I was like this is not - it's gonna take me a very long time to be able to get to the top of the food chain, so to speak, to where I can change - to fix it, to like, change the system from within, right? And I was like, I don't know if I want to spend the next 10 to 15 years in my life feeling so miserable, and not in sync with myself to be able to do that work.
And then I had a couple of friends that had already worked in college counseling settings. And they were like, I think you'll really like it. And they saw how miserable I was that year in the hospital. And they were like, you need something different, right, you’ve done practice. You've done a hospital thing. Do college counseling. It's like those are like the big 3: private practice, hospital, college counseling, right, at least at the time when I was in school. And so I was like, okay, I'll do it. And then at my interview in walks Dr. Erica Schweitzer. My hero, my mentor, the person that changed a lot of things in my life for me. So that year at Malcolm X, I truly think that was one of the most transformational years for me. Because college counseling came with a sense of security for me, and because Erica’s supervision came with a sense of security. A sense of - I can talk about anything, and it's okay, and that I'm valid, and that my feelings are valid, and my development as a therapist might not be as linear as other people's. But that's valid. I think I grew more in that year than I probably have any other year. Yeah. And so I clearly made a relationship for life there, because she’s still my supervisor and she is the one that advocated for me to be here at Room to Breathe.
And then I went on to do my fourth year…was also another college counseling setting with wonderful supervisors. It was a wonderful setting. Internship, I ended up moving to Houston for internship, where I did another college counseling year. That was a year of Covid. So I moved all the way to Houston like June, July 2020, right? And we worked from home the entire year.
Sara: Hmm.
Ramya: And that was - my parents still live in Kentucky, so when I was in Chicago, it felt more accessible while I was in Chicago, my sister moved in with me to Chicago to go to school. So we lived together, and my sister and I are very, very close.
Sara: We are so similar!
Ramya: And I had a whole group of friends that I had built. And that's what I mean when I say Chicago feels like the most home for me than anything else, my people are still there. That is where I, for the first time, I mindfully created a space that felt the most like me for me, and that I could build on. I had met my husband online. He lived in Maryland at the time. So we were in a long distance relationship, right? There were all these things going on, moved out to Houston by myself, hadn’t lived by myself in 4 years at that point, because I was living with my sister the whole time. It's like a 20 hour drive, like a several hour - over 20 hour drive - several hour plane ride to get to my friends or my family, and it was Covid. So I was like stuck in an apartment by myself, without my partner, without my sister or without my family and friends. That was probably the most lonely year in my life. And I was like, I don't know how to exist in a world, exist in a college counseling setting where things don't feel more flexible, where things don't feel sustainable.
And then I got married. I moved to the DC area for Postdoc, which was another college counseling setting, and that very much felt the same way… is when the sustainability and the efficiency and feeling grounded kind of came in for me. It wasn't a very validating experience. A lot of different things happened. We're still trying to navigate how to work through things like working from home. Yeah, with the pandemic. How are we going to see clients? That was a huge turning point for our field, too, of how we see clients when we're not in person, and keep ourself safe.
And so out of all of that feeling - the unrest feeling - in the world, in my workplace and in myself at the time…so many transitions. Right? I was a newlywed. This is just last year. I was a newlywed trying to transition from being in a different city, living with my partner for the first time, because we were a long distance the whole time, moving to a different city. New job. Like the world had changed since the last time I had been in person with anybody. Something’s just not working for me. I was in survival mode, and the most energy I had was to show up for my clients and be present for them. I had no energy for myself. I had no energy for my life. And that's when I had called Erica one day, and I was like, I need a mentor. I need to talk through how I'm feeling. Cuz I had graduated, I had earned my doctorate degree right? I was on Postdoc. I told her, everyone kept telling me that if I could make it through the trauma that is grad school in this field things would get better for me. And it's been almost a year, and it feels nowhere close to getting better. In fact, things felt like they were getting worse. And she was like, Ramya, you have to find something that's sustainable. What do you want? What are your values and what feels sustainable? She was like, you don't have to be someone's workhorse. You get to have your own autonomy. You get to be empowered, and you get to do things your way, so things do feel better. And that's when she introduced the idea of Room to Breathe. She was like, you make your own schedule. Everything is pretty collaborative. You have your autonomy as long as you're getting your work done. Nobody really cares what you're doing, nobody’s really monitoring my schedule. Nobody's asking me what I do with my free time. I get to live my life. Imagine that.
Sara: Wild! (laughs)
Ramya: And that's when I got here, and these last 6 months have been, I think, have been the most transformational 6 months since that year at Malcolm X with Erica back then. Life feels good. I feel like I have this space to settle in as a clinician, the space to settle into my life as a person. Everything that I felt like I lost over the past 2 years, 3 years, navigating the pandemic and everything else in my life. I feel like I can finally take a deep breath and relax.
Sara: Yeah.
Ramya: And it really is that sustainability piece for me.
Sara: Totally. Which I mean also probably speaks volumes to how you’re showing up for your clients, because we're all in transition, because what - is it a pandemic? Still? Yeah, I don't know.
Ramya: Some medical providers are like, “Oh, we're no longer in a pandemic.” And I'm like, mmmm…has the CDC said anything about it, though?
Sara: Who do we trust, I don’t know?!
Ramya: We’re still navigating that.
Sara: You're speaking to the clinicians life experience that is so valid and valuable in showing up for all of the humans that come, that are working through their own life stuff. And that's really huge. To be able to speak to - like that is also your healing journey right?
Ramya: Absolutely. And that is what makes my professional journey so personal too. Because yeah, I would probably would have done a couple of things differently. And I think that all of those things push me to be who I am today. It's twofold right, I’m not someone that believes that like you have to struggle, and you have to like go through all of this shit, to be frank, to be able to grow as a person. And I also think there are pushes and challenges that I need to again cross off of what I don't want, and cross off what I don't like to be able to advocate for what I do want and what I do like, and build the life that I see for myself personally and professionally. Yeah, I think it absolutely makes me a better person and a better clinician.
Sara: Yeah. So in terms of collaboration. What I want to speak to is more somatics, really like mindfulness work - in any capacity that you want to think of that, so are there any passion projects or things that you see kind of coming to fruition, especially really in your interest in working in body, image, and eating disorders and kind of exploring that. What comes to mind when I'm speaking to all this?
Ramya: Yeah, so that - the body image, eating disorder, healing journey of that for people. I think I'm at a point where I'm wanting to settle a little more before thinking about or pursuing passion projects. I think it would be really neat to be able to do a South Asian or an Asian American group, like a group therapy group or a support group. Or hold more spaces for that population. Because I'm really seeing, as Erica actually said to me this week, people are looking for clinicians like me and other clinicians that have my identities or similar ones or experiences. And that's the gap, right? That's the gap that we're trying to close of destigmatizing mental health in most people of color identities. Most communities, most BIPOC communities of - how are we reaching across the aisle? How are we building a bridge to be able to show people that this is also a resource and a support. So yeah, I think in my ideal world I'd love to be able to start a group, several groups. Just to begin with. But who knows what the future holds about trying to bridge that gap?
Sara: I think if I went back to ask my question, maybe I'd make a statement that you're showing up the way you wanted someone to show up for you.
Ramya: Absolutely. That’s what feels so fulfilling for me now.
Sara: Yeah. So I think that's enough. And I also want to like, quote Erica, and like - Hey. you don't have to do anything. You're done doing. You do get to take a period to just settle in.
Ramya: Yeah.
Sara: And feel it out.
Ramya: That's true.
Sara: Yeah. So I almost want to be like “you’ve arrived.”
Ramya: I feel like I've arrived.
Sara: You have, and I'm so grateful for you.
Ramya: Thank you.
Sara: Yeah. But yeah, I'm blown away by the similarities we have that we've never explored before.
Ramya: Yeah?
Sara: I mean. So Kentucky is not really that… I mean my partner is from Kentucky, so I go to Kentucky a lot. But my sister and I lived together well. She was also in grad school. I was in grad school.
Ramya: Don't tell me your sister is also a lawyer.
Sara: No, she's not a lawyer. She's a designer. She acts like a lawyer sometimes, though, like she's who I call, if I need to call the car dealership or something. We both went to Adler. We both worked at Malcolm X. But more importantly, we both went to school premed, and I wanted to be a pediatrician.
Ramya: Oh, my God, I did too right! So it went from being a pediatrician to being a child psychologist, to now the primary people that I see are individuals. I'm expanding to couples.
Sara: And I didn't want to be a child psychologist, but I thought I wanted to work in the sports psych realm with kids at 1 point, because I was coaching, and like parents can be crazy. And I'm like, your kid is not a pro athlete. They’re 7, and maybe they should play like 7 other sports, I don't know. But then I couldn't, again, it was like that feeling of these are my children, and it really led to burn out…
Ramya: I do, on occasion, see children, I have taken on a couple of child cases. That's not where I hang my hat, though, like my biggest passion and working with people is working with people of color. Young adults, transitioning adulthood age, career changes…anything of showing up for people the way that I felt like I needed help when I was their age or when I was in that place of life.
Sara: Yeah. You don't have to hang your hat anywhere yet.
Ramya: I guess not. But it’s an evolving process. Right? I'm sure I will feel differently in another 10 years.
Sara: And you'll say something new to little Ramya. Which is awesome.
Well, I'm really happy we got to speak today. I feel like we need to speak again in like a year, and who knows what we'll be talking about? I mean, we're going to be talking every week. But I just mean in this format where we talk more about you and your journey.
Thank you. We will be posting this to all of our people, and I can't wait.
Ramya: How exciting! Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this new project.
Sara: For sure, we'll see where it goes.
