After struggling as a biology major, being kicked out of an acting program, taking law school exams and bombing them, I remember saying to myself and whatever higher power exists in this universe “Okay, okay, I hear you. I will take a psychology class for goodness sake!
Reluctantly I got a couple degrees. collected my licensing hours and even passed my exams. Despite all of that work, I was still convinced it wasn’t my path. Just after getting my license, I got a job as a corporate minion for a fortune five hundred company managing medical business. For years I worked alongside people with business degrees who were focused on money, metrics and efficiency. I crunched numbers and became a leader of people. It drained me completely.
It wasn’t until a little voice inside starting telling me my health was at risk if I didn’t change course that I took the leap to open a therapy practice. Let’s be real here. It was scary. I was a single mom giving up a guaranteed pay check, great benefits, higher pay and a lot of security, to be out there on my own. What the heck was I thinking? Maybe for the first time in my life I wasn’t thinking. I was feeling. I was listening to my intuition.
Wayne Dyer, one of my favorite authors once said (and I am sure he said that someone else said it first), “When you are on the right path the universe will conspire to help you.” Well, the universe did help me, that, and the 14K I had to borrow from my dad to help me get started. Within eight months my therapy practice was full time and I was making enough to support me and my kids. It was like the gates to my calling just opened up and let me in. I thought, “Okay, maybe I am meant to do this……just maybe I can be a great therapist.”
Today I will say that being a therapist is one of the few things I am really really good at. It feels natural to me, like meeting someone new and having a two-hour conversation that feels like 15 minutes. It just happens. I feel what others are feeling, I sense the energy in a room, I listen to body language and words and see the hidden messages underneath the masks. Then somehow, I am able to help a person navigate life in a new way. I am able to offer them an ear that hears things just differently enough that they really feel heard for the first time. I consider it a gift, a gift I am responsible for. A gift that I have to nurture and care for. A gift that I am so very grateful for.
People ask me, “How do you do what you do?” They say, “I couldn’t sit with people all day long and listen to their stories, worries and woes. How do you not bring it home with you? I just don’t know how you do it?” For me it’s kind of like being an oceanic surfer. Surfing is all about balance, flexibility, finding your sweet spot and knowing the terrain.
I would say I used to be a runner but it wouldn’t be accurate. Putting on my running shoes and my headphones in the early morning brought me peace. My knees can’t take the impact anymore but I still run in plenty of other ways. I’m still a runner. I run from hard conversations sometimes. I run from my feelings. I run from housework and laundry. I will avoid laundry until I literally have nothing to wear. I know, if I just throw a load in every night when I get home it won’t pile up right? But then I have to face laundry every day? Every day? I would rather avoid it as long as I can and then deal with it when I have to.
