Where it Begins
My story begins in Ethiopia, where I was born, and continues in the Pacific Northwest, where I arrived as a young girl learning to navigate two very different worlds. I grew up a bridge between cultures: speaking both languages, holding both expectations, making sense of two worlds that didn't always see each other clearly. I was loved deeply, and often misunderstood, living in the space between belonging and becoming.
That space taught me something I carry into every therapy room: that even in the presence of love, so much of our inner world goes unseen…and that the pain we don't name doesn't disappear. It moves quietly through us, into our bodies, our relationships, our children, and the way we move through the world.
As I grew older, I found myself returning to the same questions in different forms: Why do people carry pain in silence? What keeps families from speaking the truth? How do systems, communities, and relationships shape what we believe we're allowed to feel?
I once thought those questions would lead me toward justice through institutions. Instead, they led me toward something quieter: helping people reclaim the parts of themselves that had gone unseen.
That quieter pursuit became Aymiro.
I built Aymiro because I have seen what silence costs. In my own community, I watched how stigma, shame, and the absence of language around mental health could keep people from ever reaching for help — how an inheritance of pain could pass from one generation to the next, unspoken and unattended, mistaken for simply how life is.
Aymiro exists to interrupt that silence: to create a space where what has gone unnamed can finally be spoken, understood, and no longer carried alone.
What I Believe
I believe that much of what we carry as personal pain has roots far beyond us. The instinct to stay quiet, to make ourselves smaller, to keep the peace at our own expense — these are things we learn, ways of staying safe long before we have words for them.
But these instincts do not emerge in isolation. They have a source. They are shaped by families, histories, cultures, displacement, injustice, survival, and the quiet messages people absorb about whose needs matter, whose voice is welcomed, and which parts of themselves feel safest hidden. That kind of learning leaves an imprint. It moves through generations — into our identities, our bodies, our families, our relationships, and the quiet ways we come to believe the story was ours all along.
My Professional Journey
My path to this work has never followed a single discipline. Over more than a decade, I've supported children with Autism, developmental disabilities and their families, led therapeutic and vocational programs for adults with Autism, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and provided neurorehabilitation focused counseling for individuals recovering from traumatic brain injuries and stroke before ultimately arriving in private practice as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist serving individuals, couples, and families.
Working across multidisciplinary medical, psychiatric, rehabilitation, and community mental health settings taught me something no single field could: healing is never isolated to symptoms. Every person carries a story shaped by relationships, culture, family systems, loss, and the environments that formed them.
That understanding became the foundation of Aymiro. It continues to guide the way I listen, the questions I ask, and the belief that healing begins not by asking what's wrong with a person, but by understanding what they've been carrying…and how they came to carry it.