ACA Blog

Recently I had the honor and pleasure to speak to a group of courageous young women ages 14 -19 about my life and experiences as a teen mother. I was invited by Family First, an organization in downtown Atlanta that provides counseling and assistance to young pregnant and teen moms. I was ecstatic about the opportunity to speak with this group of women of course because even 20 years later I still identify myself as a teen mom.

I am sure there are very few people reading this who are not familiar with the term ‘self care.’ This concept was introduced to me in the context of burnout, secondary trauma and the perils of working with people some fifteen years ago. At that time, I felt pretty invincible, like I had ‘myself’ together. In hindsight, I had a lot to learn, and if I am totally honest, at that time I had no concept of the valuable professional and life lessons that I could have learned from veteran practitioners in our field. Here’s hoping that you are more self-aware than I was…

For generations experts and laypeople have recommended the benefits of spending time in the countryside, taking walks in the woods, gardening and other nature related activities. This feeling of well being is based mostly on personal experience or anecdotal observations.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the free web-based Electronic Health Records (EHR) program Practice Fusion. It has a growing user base 150,000 medical professionals.

Movies and books about cross-cultural relationships just wouldn’t be complete without the jokes about language misunderstands and mishaps. Who can forget the scene in “Lost in Translation,” where a Japanese woman is asking Bill Murray to “lip” her stockings, rather than “rip.” Or in “Under The Tuscan Sun,” when the protagonist confuses the Italian word for single with the word “celibate.” At times jokes of this nature can cross the line, but as with jokes of all genres, there’s no doubt a grain of truth in the awkwardness felt on both sides of a couple that just can’t understand each other.

Recently I have been listening to a song by one of my favorite artists; Brandi Carlile named “The Story.” One part of the song really spoke to me:

Horses communicate primarily through the use of body language, eye contact, voice and smell. As we learned last time, observing the horse can often provide clues about his emotional state and temperament. This week, we will discuss how understanding horse communication may help counselors communicate with clients on a deeper level.

Stepping out of Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, China for the first time you’ll immediately notice the air. You never really thought about air much before but you notice it now, and you wonder if it’s always this gray. After you get in a taxi and it takes you a few miles away from the airport, you begin to see high rise buildings and you think, “Oh, we must already be getting to the downtown.” But then the taxi keeps rolling on and the buildings keep getting bigger and 45 minutes later you finally arrive in what is actually the downtown. And then it sinks in that this is what a city of 20 million people looks like.

I remember fondly those first few years of being a clinician; that newbie air smelled so fresh as I entered the therapeutic world with my head held high, my mind and ears wide open. I was a sponge and I absorbed every idea I could, experimented and put the ones that held the most promise into my clinician’s toolbox

When I started as president, I knew I was coming into a “dying” chapter. There were hardly anyone that came to the meetings, very few participated in activities. I had meetings and most of the time it was just me alone who would show up. I didn’t take this as defeat though. I found it as a challenge to tackle, I needed a secretary because mine quit!