Processing what illness, caregiving, and grief do to us and our relationships.
Supporting people one-on-one and writing on Substack +beyond. Finding acceptance, relief, and better ways through during challenging seasons of life. Psychotherapy in person in Los Angeles and online across California.
I work at Cancer Support Community LA, as a trainee MFT.
Working with people living with cancer, and especially their loved ones navigating caregiving, duty, and grief, through group and 1:1 therapy. Supervised by Jennifer Cumiskey, LCSW #94497.
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Writing about caregiving, illness, relationships and finding purpose & growth despite it all.
Essays on family systems, medical issues, and navigating our relationships with ourselves and others through caregiving and illness.
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What it feels like to manage illness and caregiving through technology.
Independent, evolving research on the emotional experience of using technology and institutional systems while navigating illness or caregiving: what helps, what hurts, and what’s frustrating. Patient portals, proxy access, shared calendars, and the nurse line that won’t talk to you all belong here.
How I’m thinking about it Email me about the work
For couples facing an illness, adult children caring for a parent, and people grieving a death.
Opening late fall 2026, once the Board of Behavioral Sciences approves my associate registration. I’ll practice at Therapia Psychotherapy Group under the supervision of Gozde Gokozan, PsyD, LMFT, with a small caseload of individuals and couples, in person in Beverly Hills and online throughout California.
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A hypothesis about what caregiving costs the body.
Caregiving Oxytocin Reciprocity Disruption is an early framework proposing that long-term unpaid care for a dying person, a declining parent, or an ill child disrupts the caregiver’s stress and bonding systems, with effects that show up in the individual, the family, and the institutions around them. Presenting at the National Council on Family Relations, November 2026.
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About Maria.
I’m a marriage and family therapist trainee in Los Angeles, working at Cancer Support Community Los Angeles under licensed supervision. I write, I research, and I sit with clients, and all three come back to the same question.
How do people navigate love, duty, and obligation?
Before this I spent ten years building products and teams at Microsoft, Shopify, and CHANI, where I was founding director of product and strategy. That work taught me to look at structure and think in systems, and it’s why I study how people use technology to ask for support, express despair, and try to get control of something.
An illness arrives, a court order decides how you parent, or someone dies, and the coping skills that used to work stop working. The way you relate to the people around you starts to strain, and many people end up doomscrolling or spiraling online. Relational therapy helps here.
I completed my master’s in clinical psychology at Antioch University Los Angeles in 2026, and I’m training in IFS, IFIO (IFS for couples), and EMDR.
Supervised by Jennifer Cumiskey, LCSW #94497.