love your life. live well in love.™
couples therapy expert | dr rae sandler simon | individual wellness
Denver · Hawai'i · online across 35+ states
There's a particular kind of tiredness that comes from explaining yourself in a therapy room.
Explaining why a holiday matters, or why it doesn't. Why your mother calls three times a day and why that's both love and pressure. Why the last three years have felt isolating, terrifying, and stacked with betrayal. Why you have lost friends or colleagues, felt misunderstood or wrongly accused. Why your community means more to you now than it ever has before.
Here, you don't have to explain your experience nor your existence.
I'm a licensed clinical psychologist and a Jewish woman. My practice is guided by tikkun olam, the call to repair what is broken in the world, beginning with the people in front of us. That means the context is already in the room: intergenerational trauma and the way it moves quietly through families, interfaith and intercultural partnership, questions of observance and identity, the weight of inherited expectation, and the specific grief and vigilance of this particular moment.
What this looks like in practice
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Couples across differences in observance or background. One of you keeps kosher and one of you doesn't. One of you converted. One of you wants the children raised Jewish and one of you isn't sure. These aren't small logistics, they're questions about belonging, and they deserve a therapist who treats them that way.
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Family-of-origin work. Loyalty, obligation, and love braided so tightly that you don't know where you begin and where you end.
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Inherited and intergenerational trauma. What was survived before you, and what you're still carrying on its behalf.
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Identity, observance, and the space between. Whether you're returning, leaving, questioning, or somewhere that doesn't have a name yet.
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Vigilance, grief, and safety. The parts of the last several years that you may not have said out loud to anyone.
For allies: This is a space where you can ask the questions you've been afraid to ask.
I'm a member of the Association of Jewish Psychologists, a therapist and an Executive Board Member for Gesher Community Care. My practice is a welcoming space for all identities and backgrounds - Jewish clients and allies included, never Jewish clients only.