Richmond Hill sits in York Region along Yonge Street, just north of Thornhill, and Iranian culture is part of its everyday life. When residents described their ethnic origins in the 2021 Census, Iranian was the second most common answer in the city, given by 10.1% of residents. Many of them move between Farsi and English every day: Farsi with parents and neighbours, English at work, a mix of both with their children.
Two generations often share these streets, and each carries things the other finds hard to say out loud. Parents and grandparents who arrived as adults may live most of their emotional lives in Farsi. For them the weight might be loneliness, a changed role in the family, health worries, or grief for a country that no longer looks like the one they left. Their children, raised and schooled here, might think in English and reach for Farsi mainly at the dinner table. For them it is often guilt, the pull between two sets of expectations, and questions about who they are when neither culture fits perfectly.
Sometimes the hardest conversation is between the generations themselves: an adult child who wants to make a choice the family will not like, or a parent who feels a child slipping into a life they do not fully understand. Individual therapy can help each person find the words for their side, in whichever language carries them well, before or instead of saying them at the dinner table.
Ghazal Sheikhtaheri, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), CRPO #21300, is Iranian by birth and upbringing; Tina Abadi, RP, and Roya Dadollahi Sarab, RP, work in both Farsi and English too. Sessions can be fully in Farsi, fully in English or a mix, so a mother and her adult son could each find a therapist in the language that suits them, in separate sessions of their own. People often search for an "Iranian psychologist in Richmond Hill"; what NoorMinds offers is psychotherapy with Ghazal, a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), or with Tina or Roya, each a Registered Psychotherapist, all three working in Farsi and English.
Some people find that anger or tenderness is easier to name in English, where the words carry less history; others find that a childhood memory only comes fully alive in Farsi. You do not have to decide in advance. Your therapist follows the language the feeling arrives in.
Every session is online, from home anywhere in Richmond Hill, from Oak Ridges and Lake Wilcox in the north to Langstaff in the south, or from elsewhere in Ontario. For questions about the consultation, session length and more, see the Farsi therapy across Ontario page.