Metamorphosis Counselling and Consulting

10/22/2021

I found the first half of this podcast episode incredibly helpful in describing how ADHD can look and feel in the younger years - especially for girls. It was also delightful in its graceful acceptance of the limitations of ADHD, and ways of to work with them, while leaning into the brilliance of ADHD. Some of my favourite quotes: “I thought I was a lazy kid…a bad kid” “having ADHD is expensive! there’s an ADHD tax” “I hired someone to open the mail, because it’s less expensive than paying for missed bills or the car being towed” Take a listen!

10/03/2021

The same day I graduated after my master’s program, I quit my job working for someone else, and went into full time private practice. The very next day I found myself asking the serious question: Is this what “Saturday” feels like?! A whole day, with nothing planned? Over the last few months the relentless schedule of those years has given way to a more mindful pace. I’m learning what it looks like to nurture self and stay centred daily, weekly, monthly… (Sidenote: Why is it that we essentially write our own user manual? It seems that should come with the original packaging….)

For me, staying at baseline always includes going back to basics: spending time walking in nature (which the pup appreciates), time with quiet, time with my people, feeding myself properly even when I’m alone…. Routine and ritual… Practicing gratitude and leaning into beauty. Each of these feels like a return to self, and I pick my way forward, feeling, listening to the spirit as she whispers “no, not quite…” or “yes, more of that.”

This also includes being intentionally present during family weekends and time with my kids. This weekend marks the first weekend I haven’t worked since I started this career - a goal so long in the making. It’s a grief-laced blessing. There is so much joy in being able to do what I love, set my schedule, and be more present with my family; and with that new-found joy I am reminded of all that I have lost or missed out on along the way. That’s so often how it goes, isn’t it?

My oldest entered uni this year. I don’t think they should have allowed him entrance at only 12 years old. He assures me his last birthday was his 18th, but it happened so fast we can’t be sure…. My boys used to argue over yard games but now they debate love and ethics and career paths. On my oldest daughter’s first day of high school this year she texted to ask if her friend could drive her home. I wondered if they could really both fit into a Tiny Tots car…and was it safe to pedal that thing on the side of the highway?! My youngest came through with some thanksgiving decor, but instead of handprint turkeys and glitter pinecones, there are fall-themed throw pillows and knitted pumpkins and a little plaque on my mantle that says “Thankful.”

Yes, thankful to be at a place not of “perfect” but of “enough.” For the peace of not reaching for more, but of leaning into what is. For the moments that are still ours to enjoy.

Wishing for you a moment to return to self and delight in the imperfect gifts that are here and now.

03/01/2021

Hello, loves.
Confession: Many people have a fear of public speaking. I have a fear of public writing.
Many years ago I dipped into the world of mom blogging and kept a blog of my family. Four small kids, one husband, way too many dogs, a mom with pent up literary wit….absolutely perfect blogging material! It was a way to keep record of our shenanigans and to share my little loves with family spread around the globe. It told the wonderful parts full of love and light and hilarity. All of it was true, but it wasn’t all the truth. It left out the hardest parts that were too damn difficult and inconvenient to grapple with at the time, let alone to share. When I re-read some of the blog years later, I barely recognized myself. Why? Because we are not fully ourselves without our dark corners. Have you ever seen a photo without shadows? It’s scary – like Pleasantville. Who would think a place without shadows could be so haunting? The shadows add beauty, depth, they invite us in and say, “This place is real. You can be real here too.”
So I determined that my public writing would be real. And then I hit the roadblock of: But what if I write today, and change tomorrow? To someone who values reliability and steadiness, this has been daunting. When we write, it’s there in black and white. What’s done is done. Yikes! Do I really want to keep a record of all the places, all the people I have ever been?
This is of course, an ironic conundrum. I named my practice Metamorphosis precisely because of the importance and value and wonder of the change process. Perhaps many years ago I had expected that there might come a time after great change when we emerge victorious, unfurl those glorious wings, and flit gracefully forevermore. Instead, the reality of life and change and being human means that when we emerge from the cocoon and unfurl those glorious wings, we find ourselves in yet another cocoon. The stage is already set for another season of change….

No, no it doesn’t. And this is why I have job security!

Seriously, though. In thinking this over, I’m struck by how much grace is required in the process of change. Grace extended by others to us as we shed old skins and become new versions of ourselves, the grace we extend to others as they shift and struggle along with us, and the grace and empathy we must extend to our past selves. I wonder if true change is ever actually possible without grace and empathy; because without grace and empathy for our past selves, we sit in shame. Shame keeps us in a gravitational orbit to the old patterns. Like a first date who casually mentions their ex 20 times, we may “move on” but the old patterns remain our reference point - the thing to measure ourselves by. Grace and empathy set us free. They give us permission to let go of shame, and grow.
This means that accepting grace and empathy is an act of bravery, because it opens the door to true change.
Be brave, loves. Accept grace. Move forward.

02/24/2021

Hello, loves. Here we are, nestled into February, and the further we move from 2020, the safer I feel to finally peek out from behind the curtains and ask, “Is it really gone?” For me, it was a year that drew a delineation line between “before” and “after.” It felt like we were running a marathon, but someone kept moving the finish line further away. One year ago I was lying on the couch, five weeks out from a major surgery, and three weeks away from returning to work only to go back home into isolation a few days later. The wound that would become a beautiful foot-long scar was still healing and held together by butterfly bandages. I didn’t know the love and care and tending I received from people who showed up for me would carry me through the year and change my narrative from “alone” to simply “not alone.” The power of showing up.

One thing is certain: I emerged from last year different than I went in. What does it mean, for me in particular? What has changed? What did I take with me? What did I leave there? As much as it was a year of cocooning and sheltering in place, it was also a year of exploration, taking me to new depths of compassion, of love…of courage. Deeper awareness of myself and others. Learning to lean on others while finding the outer edges of my own limits. I’m more tattooed, more pierced, and more experienced in breathtaking loss and grief. I’m also more experienced in holding space, holding others (metaphorically – it’s COVID!), and loving on purpose. I guess you could say I’m more fully human.

I read my post from last Easter which talk about “the rising,” and I wonder if we are still in the pain, or if we are in the waiting… Because honestly, if we are in the rising it doesn’t feel like it yet. In Winnipeg we are still in Code Red, and most places are still not doing business as usual. I am loving most friends from a distance, and sometimes loving members of my household from sheer determination. But whatever stage of the process we are in now, the rising will most certainly come. And when I’m not convinced of that fact, I turn to my friend Tara, who assures me that good things are coming. Very good things. Beautiful things! Magical things! Things that will fill our hearts with more beauty and light than this year has taken! I have dubbed her my “hope-holder.”

A few years ago I took a tip from my cousin and began choosing three words to guide me in the new year, instead of making a New Year’s resolution. This year I chose: Congruent. Present. Brave. Congruent, to me, means bringing what’s on my inside, to my outside. Representing myself wholeheartedly and transparently. Brave means showing up and doing the things that I know need to be done, even if I’m scared. Being willing to get into the ring without assurance of the outcome. Present - this one is particularly difficult for me, and requires a lot of intentionality, a few tools, and some old fashioned determination to put the dang phone down! I’m learning to be more present to my kids, present to the moment, and present to my own self.

I have those three words on my phone’s lock screen, and the longer I ponder them the more they feel to me like a trifecta - difficult to separate! I am beginning to think that being present and congruent is the very bravest thing we can do on this earth. (Didn’t Brene Brown write an entire book about this?!)

This year I hope to inch my way closer to that line. So here we are, nearing our Covid-versary. And we are marching along, one brave step at a time. Look at us go!

08/23/2020

Baby Girl was five years old when I started my Masters of Marriage and Family Therapy Program. I packed her first backpack and took her photo with her kindergarten teacher the same week I once again searched school halls for my own classes. This afternoon I came downstairs and sat on the porch swing after my last video session. She joined me there with a plate of food she made for lunch. She handed me a fork “we are just sharing meatballs, mom, because something went wrong with the pasta”. In a couple of weeks she will begin middle school. As we sit and munch together I look down at her “I just finished my last university client session.” She grins. It doesn’t mean the work is done, but it’s a milestone. She’ll have more of me now.

These years have required a lot of all of us. They have changed and shaped me in ways I’m not sure I expected, and this year more than the others. This year has brought a major surgery, COVID, and an intense time of grief and loss for me. At times it’s felt like I needed all the kings horses and all the kings men to put me back together again. Yet even during my own pain and healing, I’ve also been among the ranks of “the king’s men,” tasked with the incredible privilege of walking alongside other beautiful souls who are sifting through discomfort and difficulty, and working toward their own growth and healing. Isn’t that how it goes? We are both hurt and healed in relationship - each of us instrumental in both for those around us.

I have learned so much, been turned inside out time and again, and so often been amazed at the resilience and the determination of the human spirit to push relentlessly toward health and wholeness. It is sacred work - the places we go together, hallowed ground.

Some years ago I held a garage sale. A very young woman was counting coins when I noticed her hands, red and chapped. She shrugged it off matter of factly “They’re working hands.” I work more with my heart than my hands, but at the end of this practicum I see it the same way - stripped of the superfluous, tender, tired, raw and real. It’s a working heart. It’s been a brutiful process, and now it’s time for some rest.

Although I won’t be fully finished with my program until April, this feels like the end of an era. I am so grateful to have more time to focus on my family, and to continue to work and grow here in my private practice. To those of you who are joining me here after our work at Aurora, thank you for that vote of confidence.

And to all of you who are doing the difficult work of healing and growth in my office session after session, thank you for trusting me to enter that vulnerable space with you, hear your stories, and witness both the hurt and the healing.

Together, we can do hard things. ❤️

07/21/2020

until the regret becomes brittle...and then cover in forgiveness

04/16/2020

04/12/2020

Uncertainty. I have heard this word more often this week than I have heard my own name. The other day when I had coffee with my friend Melissa Steele (Here and Now Therapy), she said that when World War 2 was declared, CS Lewis wrote that people were suddenly facing this great uncertainty, but what they did not recognize was that uncertainty was not new. They had always lived with great uncertainty. This is both terrifying, and comforting. Terrifying to think that we can never actually grasp certainty of this life, this day, or even of the next moment. But so very comforting to know that we are already so familiar with the voice of uncertainty that it joins the din of background noise, and gives centre stage to hope, purpose, love and connection and whatever fuels our drive to move straight through that which threatens to undermine our very existence.

We have practiced managing uncertainty every day of our lives.

It’s still awful.

In the times when uncertainty comes back into focus, it is profoundly uncomfortable. Painful, even. Scary. To me, uncertainty is the emotional equivalent of a bed of nails. Suspense is torture for me. I appreciate spoilers so I can relish watching the plot develop toward a certain end. I read the end before the middle. I want to know what’s next. And yet, we find ourselves in a time when knowing is impossible. We cannot write the story faster than the pen will move. There is nothing we can do with this great uncertainty other than do the same thing we have always done – continue moving through it.

Author Glennon Doyle says “I may not know what comes next, but I know what comes next in the process.” First the pain…then the waiting…then the rising.
I’ve thought about that a lot this week. The one certainty is that the process will continue on its course. We are currently sitting at home, waiting for the curve to flatten, so it’s easy to believe that we are in the “waiting” part of the process. Physically that’s true, but emotionally, my friends, this is not the waiting. This is the Pain. This is the tearing down and the undoing. The fear and the loss. The goo part of the cocooning. We are reduced to building blocks so we can be put back together again. Nothing is certain except that we WILL be put back together again, using the same fuel that has pushed us through the process again and again and again.

When going through a divorce several years ago, I got a tattoo of a beautiful butterfly in delicate real-to-life detail. It felt representative of where life had taken me: Emergence. And while the emergence, the rising, is certain, the details never are. It is perhaps apt that my “butterfly” turned out to actually be a glorious giant moth.

Details are uncertain, but the rising is inevitable.

Happy Easter.

04/11/2020

Ron Sigurrdson, MMFT, discusses the difference between victimhood and survivorship, and what is needed in order to cope.