Seeing Your LightCounseling PLLC

Adoption counseling · Chicago & Oak Park, IL

A space where you don’t have to explain the basics.Therapy that understands your whole story.

Specialised support for adoptees and adoption-affected families, people living with chronic illness, and individuals navigating a public life — in Chicago, Oak Park, and across Illinois via telemental health.

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Who this space is for

You can be seen as a whole person

For Adoptees

Adoption is a lifelong experience — not a one-time event. As an adoptee, you may find yourself navigating questions about identity, belonging, family, and relationships that don't have easy answers or no answers at all, and these resurface at unexpected moments throughout your life. You might be struggling with how adoption has shaped your sense of self, your relationships, and your mental health. You might be dealing with the complexities of reunion, or the overwhelming difficulties of not knowing where to begin. You might simply want a space where you don't have to explain the basics or deal with common misconceptions. At Seeing Your Light Counseling, you don't. This is a space that understands adoption from the inside out: the losses, the questions, the hopes, and the challenges of integrating grief with gratitude.

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For Birth Parents

Placing a child for adoption is one of the most profound decisions a person can make (or may be forced into), yet it is one of the least talked about experiences. The doubts, the grief, the love, the ongoing questions about your child's life, the complicated feelings that come with reunion or the absence of it — these deserve support from someone with a deep understanding of the complexity and endurance of this type of pain. Whether your loss was recent or decades ago, whether you're in contact with your child or not, whether you feel at peace or still carry significant pain and conflict — there is space here for all of it without judgment. You don't have to justify your decision or minimize what you've been through to be welcome here. This is a space where you are enough no matter where you're at or what you've been through.

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For Adoptive Families

Adoptive parenting brings unique joys and unique challenges, but many parenting resources don't address the impact of your specific circumstances and post-adoption support from agencies is often not sufficient — or your kids are adults now but some questions or conversations are only surfacing now. You may be navigating questions about identity and birth family, being a bi-racial family, working through attachment challenges, or trying to understand how adoption has shaped you and your family's dynamics in ways you didn't anticipate. Your love, care, best of intentions, and hard work are a given, but sometimes you may doubt yourself and wonder whether it is enough? This is a space where you can explore those questions honestly in all their complexities. It is a space where you can gain your own insights with the support of someone who has been trained in working with all parts of the adoption constellation.

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For people living with chronic illness

Living with Long Covid, ME/CFS, or other chronic conditions means navigating a world that often doesn't believe you, doesn't support you, and rarely understands what you're actually going through. The losses are real and many: your former self, your plans, your relationships, your sense of what your life was supposed to look like. Therapy here isn't about toxic positivity or pushing through. It's about building a life that is genuinely meaningful within the reality you're living in. It is a space where the full complexity of your reality is acknowledged, not minimized, and where new possibilities that can truly work for you can be explored based on what is most important to you.

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For caretakers

Caring for someone with a chronic illness is a special kind of invisible labor. You may have watched someone you love lose capacities, plans, and pieces of themselves — and found yourself quietly losing pieces of yourself too. The grief is real, even when your loved one is still here. The isolation is real, even when you're surrounded by people who care. You may be navigating a profound shift in your relationships, your identity, and your sense of what your life was supposed to look like. You may feel guilty for struggling when you're not the one who is sick. You may have put your own needs so far on the back burner that you're completely out of touch with your own needs. This is a space where your experience matters and your needs will be the focus so you can be there for others as you choose to AND live your life.

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For public figures & advocates

Being visible to the public in a specific role, whether as an activist, advocate, public figure, or someone whose work has brought unexpected visibility, creates pressures that are unique and that nobody prepared you for. Defining and holding boundaries between your public narrative and your private self can become difficult. The expectations of others or self-imposed can weigh on you. There are costs and benefits of being seen in this way. This is a space where you can be a whole person, not a story. Where the parts of you that want to serve the greater good can be in a safe conversation with the parts of you that want to be private and protected.

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Meet your therapist

Clinical knowledge.
Lived understanding.

As someone who chose a new purpose in midlife by becoming a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, I layered specialized trauma and adoption research and clinical training on a foundation of rich lived experiences. I have lived on three continents but am based in the Chicago area and founded Seeing Your Light Counseling to support people with unique and often invisible challenges — where identity, health, family, and public visibility impact life in ways that most therapists haven't encountered, let alone lived. I bring both clinical training and personal experiences to my work with those affected by adoption, chronic illness, advocacy work, or being known to the public in some way. I understand how deeply these aspects affect every part of our lives, even if it seems unrelated on the surface. These challenges benefit from a therapist who can see the connections, patterns, and roots of your struggles. Sessions are available in-person in Chicago and Oak Park, and via telemental health throughout Illinois.

Meet Sanna

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