Rachel Wahba

Writer, Speaker, Psychotherapist

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The Richard Alpert in Ram Dass

Jan 15

The Richard Alpert in Ram Dass

December marks the yahrzeit of Ram Dass/Richard Alpert z”l. I remember him well. No one synthesized Eastern Wisdom with Western psychology as brilliantly as he did. Still relevant, his numerous recordings and work spanning decades until his death on December 22, 2019 can be accessed online. I was fortunate to know Ram Dass personally. And its safe to say he had never met anyone with my strange background; an Iraqi Egyptian Queer Jew, born in India and grew up Stateless in Ja

Jan 15

Marriage/Divorce Equality

2013 was a bittersweet year. My “gay” marriage of thirty-one years broke apart as Marriage Equality was becoming a reality in the United States. The LGBTQ community was on the path to marry legally, and my marriage was in pieces. Kept out of legal marriage for the past thirty years, I was now going to have to design a fair divorce. The opposing lawyer articulated the situation in his statement “As you know this was a very brief marriage.” Since when is thirty-one years “brief

Rachel Wahba is a writer, psychotherapist, and co-founder of Olivia Travel/Companies. An Iraqi -Egyptian Jew, born in India, she grew up in Japan.

The many dimensions of

displacement and exile are a constant theme in her work as a writer, therapist, and in her activism as a Mizrahi Jew who grew up stateless.