Aayushi

Age: 28
Identify as: Non-Binary & Queer
Available on: Friday 12-3 PM
Languages: English, Hindi, Odia
Mode of communication: Phone Call

Hi, I’m Aayushi (they/she/he), non-binary and queer, currently nesting in Pune. I’m a communications strategist and researcher.

Growing up queer and trans in a small town, with very little to make sense of things, left me with a lot of ifs — if only there was someone like me around, if only I’d known that sooner, if only I could talk to someone who would listen and just get it. I want to help close that gap, one if at a time. 

Peer support, as a system of care by the community and for the community, is often treated as informal — but there’s immense value in lived experience.

Over the years, it’s been one of the things that kept me afloat, and it continues to remind me how much strength there is in community care. Strangers who knew nothing about me offered comfort, safety, and empathy — someone listening, someone who understood, purely because of shared lived experience, without judgment. That’s what I hope someone feels after talking with me: a little less alone, a little more understood, with no pressure to have it all figured out. 

In more than one way, queerness, and the community I found through it, saved my life, and I want to do my bit in building that same kind of space for someone else. I know what it means to be really seen, to have that assurance that it will get better.

I aim to create a space that’s unhurried, free of judgment, and genuinely curious — one where you can say the messy, half-formed version of what you’re feeling and know it’ll be met with care, not correction. This could look like sitting with you through a hard moment, helping you work out a spiral of thoughts and feelings, or simply being around when the day feels like too much. 

One thing I’d like you to know before we talk: you don’t have to have the “right” words ready. There’s no rigid structure to untangling the messiness of life, or the heaviness of the mundane. We’ll figure it out together. 

Outside of work, I love movies a little too much, make playlists for every mood I’ve ever had, and disappear into poetry and fanfic more often than I’d like to admit.