Julie North

I remember graduate school fondly. I waited five years before I went back to school. I was ready to go back to school and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much. I remember how nice it felt to have only two classes and wanting to read material as opposed to having to read the material. I also paid for my education this time around and that might have made a difference as well.

During my graduate classes all my professors talked about self –care. It was a term I had not heard before. I would sit in class and think “who needs self-care? It sounds like something for people who are weak in mind, who can’t handle what is put in front of them." I also thought “I won’t need self-care I can handle my clients.” Well that line of thinking came back to bite me in the butt.

My husband and I live in the countyside we work in. My husband teaches in the town we live in. My daughter attends the school system my husband teaches in. The only spot we have not been in yet is my daughter having her father as a teacher-but we will get there soon enough. Living in a small town can be almost incestuous and not by the normal definition. A majority of the people in our town have lived here all their lives so the blood lines run long and deep. When you are transplants like my husband and myself it can be tough to be welcomed. I was looked at as a “city girl” for a long time.

My husband is a total “techie” and he has been trying to get me to blog for a year or so now but I never would. So I am surprised at myself that I am interested in doing it now. But I have come to see the value in blogging about counseling and the value of my husband’s advice. We live in a rural community. He is a junior high teacher and I am a traveling counselor. Like Bob Dylan says “no direction or home”. My car is my office. I receive referrals from the local Department of Human Services (DHS). They handle all the abuse and neglect referrals from the county on children and adults. My job is tough. I go into the homes of the referred families and work with them on the identified issues. Those issues are usually identified by the Children’s Protective Service Worker (CPS) of course we all know there is never just one issue and rarely is it the identified issue the CPS worker states.