Today we’d like to introduce you to Reetu DeLeon.
Hi Reetu, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always been interested in relationships, not just what happens between people, but the stories, families, cultures, and experiences that shape how we show up with one another.
I earned my master’s in social work from NYU and began my career in New York City, where I spent many years working with individuals, couples, and families. One of the most formative parts of my career was my postgraduate training at the Ackerman Institute for the Family. That training taught me to look beyond the person sitting in front of me and ask bigger questions: What did they learn about love in their family? What roles were they expected to play? What gets passed from one generation to the next? And how do culture, identity, and family expectations become part of our relationships?
My later training in Emotionally Focused Therapy deepened that work and gave me another way to understand the attachment needs underneath the conflicts couples often bring into therapy.
As a South Asian therapist, I also became increasingly aware of how easily cultural values can be misunderstood or even pathologized in therapy. Ideas about family involvement, loyalty, obligation, marriage, boundaries, and independence can look very different across cultures. That became an important part of my work, particularly with South Asian individuals, couples, and families.
Eventually, my family and I moved from the New York area to Arizona, and I built LionHearts Therapy here while continuing to work with clients in both Arizona and New York. More recently, my husband Luis joined the practice after making a pretty remarkable career change of his own, from working as an electrician in New York City to becoming a therapist specializing in grief and trauma.
Today, Lionhearts feels like the culmination of many different parts of my life. I get to do work I care deeply about, helping people understand not only what is happening in their relationships, but where those patterns came from and how they can begin to create something different.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Definitely not. There have been a lot of unexpected turns along the way.
One of the biggest challenges has been learning to tolerate uncertainty. Private practice can look very established from the outside, but there have been plenty of moments of wondering whether I was making the right decisions, whether clients would find me, and how to grow without losing the kind of therapist I wanted to be.
Moving from the New York area to Arizona was another major transition. I had spent years building my professional identity and community in New York, and moving meant finding my footing again, both personally and professionally. At the same time, I was raising a family and trying to figure out what it meant to build a career that mattered to me without allowing work to consume the rest of my life.
There have also been challenges in finding my voice as a South Asian therapist in a field where many of our ideas about relationships, boundaries, independence, and family are rooted in a very Western framework. Over time, I became more comfortable questioning some of those assumptions and speaking more openly about the importance of understanding culture before labeling a family or relationship dynamic as unhealthy.
I think one of the biggest lessons along the way has been that growth rarely looks as linear as we imagine it will. My career has been shaped just as much by the pivots, uncomfortable seasons, and things I had to rethink as it has by the things that went according to plan. And I’m still figuring parts of it out, which I think is probably a good thing.
We’ve been impressed with Lionhearts Therapy, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
My practice is LionHearts Therapy, where we work with adults, couples, and families in Arizona and New York.
What I want people to know about LionHearts is that we don’t see therapy as simply fixing what is “wrong.” So much of our work is helping people become curious about themselves and their relationships, especially the patterns they keep finding themselves in even when they desperately want something to be different.
LionHearts has also recently become a family business in a way I never anticipated. My husband, Luis, joined the practice after making a complete career change. He spent years working as an electrician in New York City before becoming a therapist, and today he is EMDR-certified and focuses much of his work on grief and trauma. We have very different professional paths and personalities, which I think is actually one of the strengths of the practice.
I’m especially proud that we’ve built something that feels personal. We want to be excellent clinicians, but we also want to be real people in the room. Therapy can involve incredibly difficult conversations, but it can also include humor, warmth, honesty, and moments of genuine connection.
Ultimately, I want LionHearts to be known as a place where people can understand themselves and their relationships more deeply, not because someone is telling them how they should live, but because they are becoming clearer about who they are, what they need, and how they want to show up in the relationships that matter to them.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I definitely wouldn’t call myself a risk-taker. I’m much more of a think-it-through, make-a-plan, and then probably think about it some more kind of person. But when I look back, I’ve actually taken some pretty big risks.
After college, I moved from Arizona to California without really knowing anyone. Then a few years later, I did it again, moving from California to New York for graduate school, again without having any community there. At the time, I don’t remember thinking of either decision as particularly brave. I just knew what I wanted to do next and went.
Choosing social work and becoming a therapist was probably a risk in a different way. There weren’t many Indian therapists that I knew of at the time, and it certainly wasn’t a career path I saw many people in my community taking. Looking back now, I think there was something a little trailblazing about choosing this profession, although I definitely didn’t recognize it that way at the time. I was simply drawn to the work.
Years later, moving our family from the New York area back to Arizona was another big leap. By then, I had built a career, a professional community, friendships, and a whole life there. This time I also had a family to consider, so the stakes felt very different.
Private practice has required its own kind of risk-taking too. There’s freedom in building something yourself, but there’s also uncertainty. You make decisions, try things, change course when you need to, and learn that you can’t plan for every outcome.
I think that’s probably how I approach risk in general. I’m never going to be the person who says, “Let’s just do it and see what happens.” I’m going to research it, talk it through, and have a backup plan. But looking back at my life, I may be more willing to take risks than I give myself credit for. I’ve learned that being nervous about a decision doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the wrong one. Sometimes it just means you’re choosing something you haven’t done before.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.reetukdeleon.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lionheartstherapy?utm_source=qr
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reetu-deleon-lcsw-10a1634/
