What happens when you lose your sense of belonging — not to a place, but to yourself?
I've asked that question from four different countries. Lima, where I was born. Madrid, where I first understood how much of home lives in language. Amsterdam, where routine became its own kind of translation. And California, where I've spent the longest stretch of my adult life, raising two children far from the family who raised me.
Every move expanded what I understood about the world. Every move also meant starting over — new rhythms, new routines, and the quiet work of figuring out, again, who I was without the context that used to hold the answer for me.
I wasn't only adapting to new places. I was learning how to stay recognizable to myself while everything around me changed.
That question eventually became my profession. I hold a Master of Science in Counseling Psychology, with a concentration in Marriage & Family Therapy, from California State University, East Bay. I've worked with immigrant communities and multicultural families, with children navigating two cultures at once, and with parents raising kids in a country that wasn't built with their family in mind.
Lived experience and clinical training kept circling the same three questions: Where do I actually belong? How do I honor where I come from while becoming who I am? How do I build real relationships without losing myself in them? TheLoCas 3.0 is where those questions live out loud, instead of just in my own head.
