Episode #053 · Elena Khazanova
Nobody Rebuilds A Life Overnight
Elena Khazanova arrived in the United States in her early twenties as a refugee after fleeing the former Soviet Union with her family.
She had already lost one home. In America, she would have to build another—learning a new language and culture, finding work, changing careers, surviving cancer, and figuring out where she belonged along the way.
In this conversation, we follow what rebuilding actually looked like for Elena over the next three decades. We talk about immigration, trauma, achievement, somatic therapy, illness, friendship, and the countless ordinary decisions that eventually add up to a life.
Growing Up Disconnected From Her Body
Elena grew up in the former Soviet Union. Her father was in the Soviet Navy, and the family moved throughout her childhood.
One of those places was particularly restrictive for girls and women. Elena remembers being nine years old when someone told her never to look a man in the eye because he might interpret it as an invitation. There was a park across the street from her apartment building, but she couldn't go there alone.
“As a girl, my expression became very, very constricted. I became really small and tight in my body.”
Elena responded by putting more of herself into her mind. She became deeply identified with being intelligent and describes herself during that period as disembodied.
Today, she describes embodiment as having access to the “universe of sensation” happening within the body—to your hands, feet, the chair underneath you, and the physical experience of occupying your own body.
“I wasn't really in my body at all.”
That early experience would eventually become closely connected to her work as a psychotherapist and somatic practitioner.
Becoming a Refugee and Starting Over in the United States
In 1995, Elena and her family came to the United States as refugees. Her parents had already been forced to flee Baku during the Karabakh war, eventually leaving on a military plane without seats.
Elena arrived in Rochester, New York, in her early twenties. She had family nearby but had left her close friends behind, and the social fabric of her new country felt unfamiliar.
Elena calls the experience “relationally homeless.”
She was accustomed to friendships where people stood close, touched one another, and talked about personal subjects quickly. In the United States, she had to learn small talk.
At first, she couldn't understand why people spent so much time “talking about nothing.” Eventually, she came to understand it as a way of establishing safety between two people.
“My body is telling your body that we're safe together.”
Learning How to Belong in a New Culture
For the first six months in the United States, Elena says she was in shock. Then she made a conscious decision to engage with the culture around her.
“I’m gonna make an American friend.”
While attending adult education school to learn English, Elena began watching for the ways Americans expressed warmth and care. People from a donut shop across the street would bring free boxes of donuts for the immigrant students. Elena realized the gesture was an attempt to welcome them.
Eventually, she moved to the Washington, D.C. area. She had an education degree but didn't speak enough English to teach and already knew she wanted to move toward psychology.
She began looking for a professional bridge between where she was and her eventual goal of becoming a psychotherapist. Her answer was massage school.
There, Elena learned about bodies, personal space, boundaries, and care. She also met Amethyst, her first close American friend, who introduced Elena to her circle and helped her find an apartment in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“It took me a long time to truly be at home, but that's when I started feeling at home.”
How Cancer Changed Elena’s Relationship With Memory
Years later, breast cancer brought Elena back to experiences from much earlier in her life.
During chemotherapy, she became extremely sick and spent long stretches in bed. Memories she'd lost began surfacing.
Some were concrete. Others arrived as images or metaphors. Elena worked through them with her therapist, including experiences she couldn't fully explain or consciously remember.
That period deepened her understanding of how much of our experience exists beyond what we're able to put into words. Elena talks about somatic therapy alongside storytelling, music, movement, play, and creative expression as ways of accessing those parts of ourselves.
Finding a Sense of Home Decades After Immigration
When I ask Elena what open question she's living inside today, she talks about our relationship with the environments we inhabit.
During work with a therapist, Elena was asked about the landscape she'd felt connected to where she was born. She immediately thought of a particular mountain.
“I feel a little bit like an orphan,” she told him. “I've been away from that mountain for so long.”
Her therapist suggested a ceremony in which they would ask the Blue Ridge Mountains to “adopt” her. Elena acknowledges that the idea might sound “woo-woo.” She also describes feeling a physical shift afterward.
“All of a sudden I felt more, almost like I felt my weight a little more.”
“I don't know what's real and what's metaphorical, right? And in some ways it doesn't really matter.”
Mentions and links
Elena Khazanova
Elena Khazanova (she/her) is a licensed psychotherapist, educator, and creator of Somatic Installation™ and Somatic Entrainment™, body-based methods that transform fleeting “glimmers” into lasting states of safety, connection, and joy. With more than 25 years of experience, she has trained thousands of individuals and professionals worldwide in somatics, positive neuroplasticity, and collective healing. A cancer survivor and former trauma therapist, Elena learned firsthand that healing requires more than pulling weeds—it also means planting flowers. She is currently writing her first book on embodied healing and collective resilience. Learn more at elenakhazanova.com and join her newsletter for ongoing insights.
