Kristen Nassif might know you better than you know yourself. She’s going to help you with that.

As a psychotherapist, Kristen focuses on identity, which, for women, is especially challenging.

Women go through many phases in life, from puberty to childbearing age to menopause, and our

identities may shift, too. The important thing is finding balance, in ourselves and in our lives.

“Most people don’t have a strong idea of who they are outside of family dynamics or their jobs,”

Kristen explained. “Women struggle with this because they are pulled in many different

directions.” 

Most women face a dual expectation – to be either a “boss” or “soft and feminine.”

All women have both inside of them, yet it’s hard to be one or the other, or both at the same time.

“It’s not hormonally sound for us to engage in life that way,” Kristen said.

Kristen shared that she, too, had identity issues in high school and early college. She was

depressed and felt like she could never be enough. She held a lot of anger inside, which

showed itself outside. She remembers a Bible camp in her senior year when the pastor called

people up to pray. Kristen answered the call. “I remember all my classmates laying hands on me

and praying for me. I felt this spirit of resentment, brokenness, and anger break over me. That was the beginning of my healing.” None of our journeys is ever over. In college, with support from a sorority sister, Kristen resolved to identify one value and express it. She chose kindness. “Within a week, I had people coming up to me, telling me how much of a change they had seen.”

Kristen credits the women on her mom’s side of the family with providing a type of stability that

has been a strong foundation for her. Her mother, her grandmother, and her great-aunts, all have

excelled at balancing the “boss” and the femininity of being a woman. They are homemakers,

attentive parents, wonderful chefs, and designers; they own their own businesses or help with

their husbands’ businesses. 

We are all part of our generational line, by nature and by nurture. “All the women in the family have the same creed,” Kristen told us. That includes her mom, Denise, who is also featured in this issue. “Being raised around that high level of continuity created an immense amount of stability for me,” Kristen added.

Kristen was able to see firsthand from the women in her family what it looks like to be both strong and feminine. “They have a lot of balance in their lives for what women are good at…The women in my family capitalized on their biology.”  This is what Kristen brings to her practice.

Thanks to Kristen’s own lived experience and her honed expertise, she is able to help women –

and men – find out who they truly are and whether they are living in harmony with themselves.

“Appreciate the way that you were biologically made and try to live optimally within that.”