journal


LIVING WELL

With sahar martinez

Welcome to Living Well — our bi-weekly spotlight on different women that we admire and find fascinating. Our goal is to share an intimate peek into these women’s lives by asking them the questions that allow them to open up about their imperfect truth, whatever that may be. 


This week’s guest is Sahar Martinez, a licensed marriage and family therapist, a professor of diversity, podcast host, and a mother of two! Dr. Sahar specializes in supporting individuals and couples while they navigate through the transitional phases of their life and has extensive experience working with clients dealing with a family of origin dynamics, generational trauma, and issues related to gender, race, and culture. 


Her clinical focus includes perinatal mental health, working with diverse populations, and attachment-focused, trauma-informed therapy. I have always found Dr. Sahar’s passion for guiding women in their reclamation of self to be truly inspiring and what I consider to be the definition of a well-lived woman. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know her better through her responses below and I hope you do as well! 

what's your enneagram number (if you know it)?

3w2 / 2w3 - I score evenly for 2 and 3, which is simultaneously annoying to me and makes perfect sense. 

If you've done the Values Deck exercise, what are your top five values? Tell us how one of them manifests in your life. What is a decision you’ve made using it to guide you?

Gratitude, justice, growth, authenticity, creativity.

What does a life well-lived look like?

Starting the day slowly. Sitting in sunshine. Enjoying a cup of coffee with my husband. Finding time to read for pleasure. Staying connected and passionate about my work. Deep belly laughs. Dance parties. Getting extra snuggles with my littles. Noticing and embracing the in-between moments that are too often overlooked. 

My version of success is…

Being able to show up authentically and wholly as myself. For me, success is deeply tied to authentic connection and honoring that in order to connect to others.

What is one way that you are different today than you were ten years ago?

I trust myself exponentially more than I did 10 years ago. The last 10 years have shown me the importance of leaning into my intuition and trusting my gut. This deep self trust has allowed me to make bolder decisions about the things I'm passionate about and to show up unapologetically and unafraid of taking up space and being exactly who I am in all spaces in my life. 

Setting aside modesty for a moment, what are you excellent at?

I can sing any Salt-N-Peppa or Notorious BIG song by heart.

Whose life perspective and way of moving through the world teaches you something about who + how you want to be?

When I think of people I look up to, I find myself looking into the future and into the past. My kids teach me every day about living for the sole purpose of finding joy in everything, which is something that is so easily lost in adulthood. My parents have taught me there is no relationship that is more important to nurture than the one you have with yourself. I find myself really drawn to seeking joy and creating space to care for my soul, and I often look to my kids and my parents as examples of how to do that. 

IS THERE A QUOTE OR MANTRA YOU ALWAYS COME BACK TO?

Purpose Fuels Passion

Can you share a book, podcast, or article that changed you in some way?

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay (really, anything by Roxane Gay) was a transformative book for me. To be faced with the intersectionality of what it means to be a woman, what our bodies mean to us, to others, and to society, the lack of safety so often felt solely based on how we physically present to the outside world -- and the invitation to embrace all sides of who we are, in spite of all that informs women to be a certain way, spoke deeply to me. We can be both/and -- I can be a feminist and I can love The Real Housewives; I can be soft when I want to be and I can be protective when I feel the need. I can embrace all the different parts of myself that create how I move through the world. 


In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate and The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk were both instrumental in how I view mental health and how we have the ability to move into more holistic ways of looking at things like addiction and trauma.

What are you grateful for today?

Today I am grateful for wrapping up work early and spending a delicious afternoon in the sun with my family. 


Sahar is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Connect with her on Instagram

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