Let's Talk Healing started before it was a practice.

In 2015, Dr. Abyan Bashir launched a public Snapchat channel called Let's Talk Therapy — bringing accessible mental health information to Somali and East African communities in the Twin Cities at a time when few providers were doing that work. It grew from a simple conviction: that people in her community deserved to understand mental health on their own terms, in their own language, without stigma.

The formal practice followed. Dr. Bashir is a 1.5-generation Somali immigrant and doctoral-level psychologist who came to the United States as a child after her family fled war in Somalia. She was the first in her family to earn a college degree, a master's, and a doctorate — working full-time throughout her entire education. That path gave her something clinical training alone cannot: the lived experience of navigating systems as a Black, Muslim, immigrant woman in the U.S., and the understanding of what it means to look for care that actually fits.

What she built at Let's Talk Healing reflects that directly. The practice exists because the gap was real — too few providers offering care shaped by the language, history, and worldview of the communities they were serving. The intention to provide culturally sensitive care existed in the field. The execution needed work.

That's still what drives us.