NEW SCOTLAND — Ashley Taheri, a mental-health therapist and mother, radiated warmth and compassion, said her husband Bill Pyke. Ms. Taheri died on Monday, April 4, 2016, in a car crash. She was 55.

Her love for her husband and for their son, Julian, now a senior at Voorheesville’s high school, was boundless, Mr. Pyke said.

As a mother, Ms. Taheri was “very open to the experience of being a mother and the experience of another person who is a child and slowly becomes an adult,” her husband said. “For her, things were not black and white. She knew about the shades of gray and the in-betweens and the other possibilities.”

Her tenderness gave their son a good foundation on which to build the rest of his life, he said.

Ms. Taheri was a mental-health therapist with a thriving private practice in Colonie, and her openness and intuitiveness allowed her to form close bonds with her patients, her husband said.

Most recently, Ms. Taheri worked in private practice, seeing individuals — from adolescents through adults — and couples for issues that included depression, communication skills, and learning to handle conflict.

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorists’ attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and for years afterward, her husband said, she worked with the Fire Department of the City of New York in its counseling-services unit. She helped surviving firefighters and the families of firefighters who died deal with trauma, grief, and loss.

Born in Manhattan on June 15, 1960, Ms. Taheri was raised in Croton-on-Hudson. Her mother was originally from Indiana, and her father was from Iran. They split when she was a child, and for many years she spent school years in New York State and summers in Iran, where her father, who worked in finance, had a home with a walled rose garden and with servants.

Moving between different worlds, her husband said, gave her a broader perspective on life, as did traveling around the world after college.

She and Mr. Pyke met in New York City, when a friend introduced them. The three had gathered at a bar where the friend’s brother was playing in a band. The music wasn’t very good, Mr. Pyke recalled, but the experience of meeting Ms. Taheri was. “It was a love-at-first-sight kind of thing,” he said.

They had their son, Julian, in 1997 and married in 2000.

Ms. Taheri earned a bachelor’s degree in behavioral psychology from Boston University in 1982 and a master of science degree in social work from Columbia University in 1995. She worked for six years as a mental-health clinician with the Fire Department of the City of New York from 2001 through 2008. After moving to the Capital Region, she worked for several years with Karner Psychological Associates before going into private practice.

She loved her work, her husband said. “She was really dedicated. She just wanted to be there for people.” She had a receptionist, but she kept her calendar herself, he said, because she knew best “what people needed, when.”

She was driving to work when the accident claimed her life.

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Ashley Taheri is survived by her husband, Bill Pyke, and their son, Julian Pyke.

Her father, Abdullah Taheri, and her mother, Marilyn Cannastra, died before her.

Funeral arrangements are by Reilly & Son Funeral Home in Voorheesville.

Friends may visit with Ms. Taheri’s family on Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at the Reilly & Son Funeral Home, at 9 Voorheesville Ave. in Voorheesville.

A friend of the family has set up a website, at www.ashleytaheri.com, to raise funds to help the family with expenses.

— Elizabeth Floyd Mair