By Greg Varner
How does a graduate student working on a master’s in counseling at GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development become an advice columnist featured in The Washington Post? How does she ink a deal to write a book that will be published by Penguin Life? How does she found a successful and growing Instagram community called Brown Girl Therapy, dedicated to the mental health of children of immigrants?
These are just some of the accomplishments of Sahaj Kohli, who contributes her bimonthly column, "Ask Sahaj," to the Post on a freelance basis. Part of the answer to all of these questions has to do with her time management skills. Another part has to do with enthusiasm.
“My passion lies at the intersection of storytelling and mental health,” said Kohli, who plans to begin writing “Ask Sahaj” weekly after she graduates this May.
The daughter of Indian immigrants to the United States, Kohli is also enjoying married life and an internship counseling clients. Somehow, she found time for a recent interview with ABC’s Good Morning America. She credits her community with helping her achieve so many milestones.
“All of the incredible opportunities I’ve gotten over the last two years have been at the hands of other children of immigrants who really believe in the work that I’m doing,” Kohli said. Her literary agent is a child of immigrants, for example, and so is the Good Morning America producer who reached out to her about an interview.
Writing an advice column, Kohli said, has been one of her dreams since she was a girl. But she doesn’t come across as bossy or arrogant.
“It’s not necessarily that I’m the expert, but more a matter of sharing knowledge,” Kohli said. “I’m saying, ‘Here are some things that you can consider.’ I approach my work as though my clients are the experts on their lives. It’s not my job to tell people how to live or what to do, but at the same time I have to remember I’ve been taught a whole slew of skills and coping mechanisms. I have knowledge about mental health and how to navigate some of these struggles that I want to share with other people.”
She founded Brown Girl Therapy in 2019, partly to make connections with other children of immigrants. She provides them with helpful writings informed by her own experiences and the struggles of other adult children of immigrants.
“I couldn’t find anything for children of immigrants, so I started writing about my own experience,” she said, “and the page blew up! I didn’t go into it knowing it would be as big as it is, but it gained traction very quickly, and one thing led to another.”
Born and raised in Virginia, Kohli was the first member of her family born in the West, as well as the first to seek formal therapy and first to marry outside her race, religion and culture. Dealing with identity issues like these made her especially eager to connect with other South Asian women who were struggling with similar concerns.
“A really common struggle that I see is unlearning this idea that because your parents made sacrifices or had it worse than you did, that somehow negates your experiences today,” Kohli said. “The narrative is, My parents had it worse, why am I struggling? My parents sacrificed so much, why am I not more grateful? They’re almost shaming themselves into gratitude. That compounds their mental health struggle, because they’re not validating that both things can be true at the same time. Your parents could have experienced what they experienced and you can be struggling with your mental health today.”
Other common struggles that children of immigrants face involve career and partner choice, Kohli said. Parents who missed stability in their own lives can be especially hungry for their children to have the security they lacked. She helps people build bridges with their parents and other significant figures in their lives.
“As we get older, but also as children of immigrants, we come to our own conclusions about what we might want to do differently in our relationships, even with our parents or with our partners,” Kohli said. “This can be really hard, because sometimes it can feel like you’re rejecting or betraying where you’ve come from, when in reality you’re just looking to build a healthier ecosystem of relationships.”
