I was painting from a young age, loved climbing wherever I could, and playing football. I grew up among boys, playing daily—which made me a genuine “tomboy.” I remember enjoying all the things I wasn’t, yet finding myself in them. Over the years, I noticed how our ways of coexisting changed—as children, then adolescents, then adults.

I grew up in a home that taught me to feel free. To be truly free, I had to learn what it means to own the power of my body, my behavior, and my speech. To own my responsibility. I was taught that being shown trust made me able to choose without feeling alone. Much of this I learned by encountering the values of people around me and feeling that I didn’t want be that way—something didn’t fit me. Between the boundaries and obligations of each age, and the things that filled me with life, I learned to dialogue with myself and with the world.

My adolescence arrived at the start of the economic crisis and amid significant family changes. Along with the assassination of Grigoropoulos, a child my age then, I began to lose the sense of security I felt. I remember writing my thoughts in a notebook so I wouldn’t carry them with me constantly. At that point, I began to think about how I wanted to be, what I wanted to be made of, what fills me with meaning and interest—and almost consciously began choosing. At 17, a deep need to speak led me to write my first poem—and I haven’t stopped writing since.

Moving to Thessaloniki to study, living eight full years, I realized daily that nothing is given. The wear on all levels during the crisis taught me to live measuredly and focus on the simple. The murder of Pavlos Fyssas by a Golden Dawn member in 2013 made me see that one cannot stay neutral when it comes to humanity—especially if you could be the next one facing those in power who abuse and control.

I understood more than ever that I had to create everything myself—that the world lay within my hands, and my hands within the world.

While studying, I explored myself and began shaping the path I wanted to walk. I read everything from philosophy to quantum physics, studied fashion editorials and rebetikomusic, enriching my aesthetics. My diploma work focused on Lacanian desire and the poetry of Argentinean Alejandra Pizarnik—a difficult but unheardof and fascinating topic, especially since my school did not give me room to be creative. After brief training in Lacanian psychoanalysis, I realized very quickly that it wasn’t the lens through which I wanted to see the world.

Upon finishing school, I was already working and volunteering at the center KETHEA—Ithaki—practically calling it home. The therapists I met trusted me, and I saw everything very early on: family sessions, individual, couples, and sibling therapy—for both prevention and reintegration. I witnessed dependence from each person’s side and the human within it. I learned to set boundaries simply in the therapeutic relationship and to be able to speak about everything.

Without hesitation, I decided to train in systemic therapy, since its philosophy came to me naturally. Four years with a team — a family—so different and dynamic, through personal and group therapy, I felt I was constantly changing. I was repeatedly in the position of grieving parts of myself I left behind to become something new—more open, able to contain “me” and everyone else, more human and creative.

In parallel, I trained as a personal trainer with an inspired instructor who taught me the basics that help the self recognize the body, breathing, posture. I learned that the way I think about a problem in my body is the same way I think about the problems of my soul—and especially that the solution is not where the symptom appears, but rather in the relationships with the parts connected to it.

Working two summers as a psychologist at a camp in Galaxidi, I encountered children and teens daily. Together we learned what kind of people they want to become, and I learned what kind of therapist I want to be. I reconnected with my childhood parts, played, ran, and stepped into roles I wasn't familiar with. Leaving there, I had to mourn two great pains: my breakup and my grandmother’s death. I saw that every death is intensely personal and weighs differently, which led me to mourn my grandmother only when I felt ready—two years later.

I worked three years with refugees in camps for the Ministry of Health—bringing me even closer to the qualities that connect us as human beings, and to those that distance us from ourselves. I resigned and opened my private practice in Thessaloniki to create a meeting space aligned with my vision of the world.

In my Master’s, I addressed football fan violence and communication—exploring for the first time a communicative perspective on violence through Gregory Bateson’s double-bind theory—since, once again, inspiration was missing from the academic framework.

By 25, I had published my first poetry book The Dust That Weighs Our Shelves. The part of me that needs to write now understands better that sharing with others is why I continue. The Way Things Break was written over four years and published at age 29.

Invited as an author at the Department of Political Science to speak about writing and my life, I realized that the deepest value—and political act—for me is the encounter. From that moment, it became clearer within me that if we can change how we meet each other, we can remake the world more human again.

In those years, I began consciously shaping myself more than ever and naturally perceiving the dynamics of relationships—especially erotic ones. Meeting people, I realize I have a unique way of connecting with them—a dynamic that inspires us and fills us with meaning to become more than what we are alone. I felt the place could no longer contain me, and I began traveling more to Athens. I worked, read widely, wore out and existed in vastly different contexts that offered me complexity and multiple facets of experience. Music—rebetiko and rap, lyrics, images, metaphors—underscore inside me the importance of rhythm in our nervous system, therefore in our relationships, becoming fundamental tools in my practice.

Sometimes I wondered whether finding meaning in many diverse things might lead me to do them all halfheartedly. But looking at life, I see how they enrich my connections—my therapeutic work and human relationships—and how they empower me to craft paths where none existed.

“I want the return of poetry by all means,” as the visual artist Yannis Kounellis would say.

Honestly, I enjoy exploring how I connect with people and observing the dynamics, patterns, and desires in our relationships. I believe that the ways we connect and communicate in our erotic relationships determine all relationships in our lives, personal and professional. From my experience, I see that above all people need to feel safe, heard, understood, and accepted for who they are.

I deeply believe we connect with others via our values—because by doing something, we communicate it and invite those who believe what we believe to come closer to us.

We fall in love and learn together how to create a shared space while being different. How we draw close and how we drift apart; we see ourselves hurt and being hurt, and each of us holds responsibility in creating beauty and pain. We learn to care and to be cared for, stretching beyond what we once were to understand that we were even more—some of it extreme. We constantly navigate between our needs for freedom and autonomy on one hand, and for safety and devotion on the other.

Erotic communication is that unique, personal relationship with our sexual nature. It is a deep personal dynamic that connects us to who we are and makes us take responsibility for the common space we co-create with others. It is the awareness that we acknowledge our sexual energy and how it aligns with our sense of self.

The way I see the world brings me here to help find ways to connect with our personal meaning and envision how we want to live. Because if you don’t know why you have become the person you are today, you can’t see the person you want to become. Our relationship with ourselves shapes our relationship with others.

Let’s speak about what is left unsaid—and say the same things differently. Let us be inspired and create different narratives for our personal history. In a society that increasingly dehumanizes us, let us return to ourselves and become human again.

This is my story, my path.