We recently connected with Khatija Dadabhoy and have shared our conversation below.
Khatija, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.
Yes, the moment for me came from being at rock bottom after the end of a very difficult relationship that left me single, moving myself and my children in with my mother, filing bankruptcy with a failing business, and heading back and forth to court over custody and restraining orders. I was flattened and wondering what the purpose in all of it was for me. I remember walking through the parking lot to the courthouse one day with this question in my mind. Mostly because I was so weary and desperate for relief and understanding. What popped through clearly in that moment was I needed to have this experience so I could guide others through their own version of the dark night of the soul. That’s when the whole trajectory changed. I already had the education and experience as a counselor. It would just mean redefining how I used those. I had mainly worked with children in schools, then left that job for my own business making healthier specialty desserts before everything came crashing down. With the help of my own therapist, I began to create a vision of the next chapter working with adults. It has grown and evolved so much since then, but I have stayed true to the calling. How this came about has been a lesson I always carry with me. The suffering that visits us is often shaping our gifts or unlocking them.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My current work really grew out of the way my personal pain catalyzed my own inner evolution and development. But I have always been connected to the work of helping and supporting others. My background is in counseling psychology and I have been in the field for 27 years. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Counseling, with a Pupil Personnel Credential to offer counseling in schools. Which is what I did for many years with elementary age children, building out a very successful and comprehensive school counseling program. I’m really proud of the work I was able to do in this capacity, and working with children will always hold a special place for me. When my life and priorities changed after having children, I knew going to a regular job everyday was not going to work for me any longer.
For about six years I grew an organic and special diets based dessert business while I continued working as a school counselor, eventually going part time at my job and then leaving it completely. That business really blossomed, but it was a tough endeavor to continue to grow it while parenting and going through many personal changes. Sometimes we have to know when to change paths. In my case, it was needing to provide financially for two small children and needing to be available for them as a newly single mother. The circumstances around that relationship and its ending were very painful and tumultuous, and moving through it all gave birth to a new direction in my work. Deep in my distress I asked the purpose of this experience and became very clear it was a calling to shepherd others through their own suffering and ego deaths into the potential rebirth on the other side.
I began working again as a counselor and coach, but this time mostly focused on women who were moving through similarly scary and painful transitions while healing from traumatic relationships. I took a very flexible job as a social worker while I built my business. It was slow going because of needing to focus on parenting, but in 2021 I finally transitioned to working for myself full time. My work and business continue to evolve as I do. My focus has broadened and shifted the more experiences, training, education, and inner transformations I’ve had. I now work with so many different types of people with a concentration on trauma and core wound healing, completing and resolving the past, nervous system repair and resiliency, inner child healing and reparenting, emotional literacy and somatic processing of emotions, retrieval of fragmented or exiled aspects of the self, transforming subconsciously held mental and behavioral programming, shifting to healthy relational patterns, discovering and restoring the essential Self and relationship to God/Source, grief through loss and transition, using energy practices to heal, and couples and family counseling.
I mainly provide one to one services right now. In the past, I have facilitated many group programs and events but lately have felt more called to the personal one to one sessions. What I love to do is help clients connect their dots and put the puzzle pieces of their life together in a way that makes them make sense to themselves. To awaken to themselves in a way that they can never slip away from again. To help them resolve and complete the past in a way that it no longer holds them back by always showing up in their present in limiting ways. Most of all, I’m here as a support, a creator of safe space, a facilitator of insights, and a guide as they heal the relationship between all of their internal parts. I think what sets me apart from others is my ability to get right to the truth and the heart of the matter pretty quickly. I have a knack for inquiry with the most illuminating and powerful questions. I also love to weave in tools of understanding the self like astrology, tarot, and the Gene Keys in order to create a larger soul map framework for our work together.
Sessions are a combination of counseling, coaching, teaching, and intuitive guidance. All work is done from a psychospiritual perspective and grounding. The main approach I utilize is a somatic and integrative Internal Family Systems Model. Modalities and tools such as reiki, HeartMath, breathing techniques, meditation, writing, astrology, tarot, Gene Keys, somatic emotional processing, subconscious reprogramming, exploring and integrating shadow aspects, parts work, inner child work, frequency medicine (using the Healy), metaphysics, and quantum field exploration may all be used depending on what is needed and appropriate for each client.
I also created a journal/workbook which allows a person to use writing, meditations, and somatic practices to work with their traumatic experiences. Writing is a huge part of my personal inner work as well as the work I do with others. I am working on writing more and more, and developing myself in that craft. To that end, I use the Substack platform to write a publication called Sweet Suffering where I explore what pain has to offer us and how we can live holding both the sweetness and the suffering of life in our hands.
Aside from my work with clients, I also provide consulting in building out counseling services and programs, community building, conflict resolution/peer mediation, and parent and staff support in schools.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Seven years ago I received a pretty shocking medical diagnosis that threw me into a bad tailspin. I was deep in fear having panic attacks and spiraling. During that time, I had the opportunity to put into practice everything I’d been learning over the years. I asked a lot of deep and valuable questions about what this experience was offering me so I understood it’s purpose in my life. I leaned heavily on what I always assess for in my clients, and that’s a support system. This was probably my most utilized resource and really helped me move through that time. Sharing our pain with others while they create safe space or help with the practicalities of life we can’t attend to keeps our trauma from impacting us more severely. But, I believe it was really the way I was able to let this experience change me and my life that helped me get back up and into life again. I had to be changed by it or it would have felt as if a random suffering was brought upon me with only the purpose of pain and hardship. I had to understand it from a higher perspective. It had a lot of gifts and wisdom to offer me but it was up to me to discover what those were, then integrate and embody them. That experience has helped me understand the closeness of death and the importance of really living, giving ourselves fully to this experience while we’re here. It’s in becoming intimate with death and our fear of it that we can let it cure us of not taking the risk to live from our heart.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
In 2004 I started a dessert business I hoped would allow me to leave my full time job, work for myself doing something creative, and be around more for my kids. At the time, there was almost no one doing what I was doing offering desserts and custom cakes made with organic ingredients and catering to special diets and food allergies. I had some really great opportunities and success with that business as a side hustle, and then shifting to part time at my job to focus on it more . In 2008 I left my job and went into the business full time. You can guess that it was a terrible time to do that given then economic downturn that occurred then. My personal life blew up shortly after, and the stress was really building as the financial resources declined. There came a point in the business where I wasn’t able to infuse enough funding to grow the business to its next level. It felt like dead ends everywhere. Ultimately, I could feel it was time to pivot and this wasn’t the aligned path. Knowing what I know now about my own soul map, I can see that it was all happening to get me on the path of my true life’s work and purpose. I felt I was listening to my inner knowing, and looking back I can see how right it was to change direction and give birth to a new endeavor. I have continued making desserts through the years as a creative outlet, and my friends and family benefit from what still remains a love for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://khatijadadabhoy.com
- Instagram: @khatija.dadabhoy
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/innerrev
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khatijadadabhoy/
- Twitter: https://x.com/khatijadadabhoy
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/khatija-dadabhoy-culver-city
- Other: https://khatijadadabhoy.substack.com/
Image Credits
Most images by Stephanie Mei-Ling