Guys N' Chai with Rahim Thawer, LCSW | Identity, Distance & Asking Who Am I
"Who am I" isn't a question you answer once. It's one you come back to.
In this episode of Guys & Chai, Ankur Varma sits down with Rahim Thawer — psychotherapist, educator, writer, and author of The Mental Health Guide for Cis and Trans Queer Guys — for a conversation about what it costs to find yourself when the community that raised you has already answered that question for you.
Rahim talks about growing up Ismaili Muslim in Toronto, the years he spent moving — Singapore, Melbourne, Winnipeg, South Africa, now Alabama — and how distance became the way he made room to ask the harder questions.
About coming out at 22, building psychic boundaries inside an insular extended family, getting sober at 38, and turning 40 with the kind of grief that comes from mourning who you didn't get to be.
This is a conversation about identity, belonging, and the quiet work of choosing a life that's actually yours — even when it means being punished for it. The real conversation starts where the script ends.
Pull up a cup.
Learn more about Guys N' Chai Podcast and Brown Man Therapy, a non-profit organization bringing awareness and solutions to South Asian men's mental health, by visiting us at the spaces below:
