Nobody saw what it took.

1 October Eight weeks 90 minutes

An eight-week group for women who moved to the UAE and quietly stopped recognising themselves. Twelve women, the same faces, every Thursday evening — long enough that you stop introducing yourself and start being recognised.

Get in touch

Thirty minutes 1-1, complimentary. Find out if it's something for you before committing to the group.

Why you are here

“It's all good.”

Yet nothing goes below the surface. Genuine connection remains a memory and a craving. Even after the most promising evenings you catch yourself thinking: maybe it's just me.

It isn't. I've felt it too.

You don't have to be in crisis to need somewhere to be seen.

That's what the room is for. Eleven others who already know the terrain — so you're heard without having to explain, and seen without having to perform. Ninety minutes a week, and whoever you actually are that day is enough.

Women: Twelve
Sessions: Eight
Each week: 90 minutes
Group: Closed

Closed means nobody joins after week one. The same twelve women, from the first evening to the last — which is the only condition under which anyone musters the courage to be real and open. You will get to know these women, and they will get to know you, and by week four that will have stopped feeling like a small thing.

Fit

This group isn't for everyone. That's what makes it work.

Come if

You look completely fine from the outside and you know that isn't the whole story
Your calendar is full and nobody in it really knows you
You've done the networking, the ladies' nights, the coffees — and came home emptier
You'd rather be known than pitched to
You can hear another woman's honesty without needing to fix her

Not this cycle if

You're in acute crisis — that needs individual clinical care first, and I'll help you find it
You want advice, a framework, or a five-step plan more than you want process
You can't commit to eight Thursdays; the group only works because the same people come back

What to expect

We express, we listen and ponder about:

Who am I now?
What happened to the ambitious woman I used to be?
Why don't I feel at home, when the life looks good from outside?
Why is it so hard to let anyone actually know me?
Do I belong anywhere?

Nobody answers these for you here. They get asked out loud, in front of women who are asking them too — and hearing it from someone sitting across from you does something that reading it never has.

What's included

Eight weeks, and the structure around them.

A private thirty-minute call with me before anything begins, so we both know this is the right room
Eight sessions of 90 minutes, same women, same evening, online
A confidentiality agreement everyone signs, and no existing ties between participants
A letter from me between sessions on the themes that surfaced, and what to sit with before we meet again
A private group channel, so the week between doesn't have to be silent

Facilitator

Kseniia, the therapist who facilitates HELD.

Who's in the twelfth chair.

I'm Kseniia. I work existentially, which in practice means I'm less focused on “there and then” than on what you're doing with it now — and on what happens in the room between us, because that turns out to be the same thing you do everywhere else.

For years my work was wellness retreats: women flying in from all over the world, leaving their lives at the door, arriving for a reset. Then arriving again the next year. Eventually I started asking what had happened in between.

Life happens, and here I am again.

Some version of that sentence, every time. And it baffled me for years — because here was a woman who was accomplished, magnetic, more perceptive than anyone else in the room, with a family and friends and a career, and she was alone inside her own life.

Then I moved countries myself and lost the professional shorthand that told people who I was in thirty seconds, the culture I was quick in, and the friends who would have said something if I drifted too far from myself. From the outside I was fine. Inside I was tired in a way sleep doesn't touch, and far too practised at being the capable one to say so out loud.

So HELD is built the other way round from a retreat. It doesn't lift you out of your life for a week. It runs alongside eight of them, with the same twelve women — long enough that life happens while you're in the room, and somebody notices.

Credentials

Integrative Wellness Therapist — 10+ years in practice

Currently reading for an MSc in Psychology of Mental Health, and training as an existential group psychotherapist

Practical

Dates and the way in.

Begins: Thursday 1 October 2026, 7:00pm Dubai (GST)
Runs: Eight Thursdays, through 19 November
Format: Online, 90 minutes, camera on
Size: Twelve women
The way in: A thirty-minute 1-1 conversation with me. To find out if this is the right room for what you're carrying.

Loneliness told you

there was no one like you here.

Twelve chairs, eight Thursdays, starting 1 October. Come and find out whether it was telling the truth.

Get in touch

1-1 before the group begins, you ask me whatever you need to, and I'll tell you honestly if HELD. isn't your room.