My new hope is that as a counselor I will look at my clients with the eyes of an artist. I’m an avid people watcher, and while sitting in a coffee shop earlier this week, I observed an interaction that touched my heart. It’s a short story, so this blog post will be short. But, [...]

I’ve been experiencing a personal and professional limbo this summer. Limbo is always that awkward time where I feel like I’m trudging along through life without really embracing it. I’ve been doing a lot of positive self-talk the past two months and through this personal discourse I’ve learned that limbo isn’t all bad.

My husband, Kyle, and I spent yesterday in Smithville, MS, which was announced today as being the third city in the United States to be hit by an EF5 tornado since the scale was revised in 2007. Kyle is a reporter for Mississippi’s The Clarion-Ledger, so he went to Smithville for an assignment. I tagged [...]

One of my classes this semester is Cultural Foundations of Counseling. Our first assignment was to write our cultural autobiography. My initial reaction to the assignment was confusion because of my limited definition of culture. In my mind, culture reflected race, and I personally did not see much culture in the white race. As my [...]

Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote in their song “Strawberry Fields” that “living is easy with eyes closed.” I heard this lyric while driving from Oxford, MS to Starkville, MS. My husband lives in Oxford, and I live in Starkville. There is a lot of driving between the two small Mississippi towns, which breeds wonderful [...]

My journey toward receiving a Master of Science in Counselor Education is one step closer toward completion. I learned and accomplished a lot this semester. I gained over 100 hours of professional experience during my practicum, and the four clients that I counseled taught me more than I taught them. While reviewing my taped sessions, [...]

Sometimes I don’t like to reveal what I’m studying in graduate school because I receive some off-putting responses from people when I share that I’m studying to become a mental health counselor. Looks of confusion and/or blank stares. Questions about my personal sanity (after all, only crazy people enter the psychology field). A short moment [...]

Self-doubt is an ugly emotion. I called my husband last week feeling completely disheartened and wondering about my abilities as a counselor-in-training. I am completing my practicum this semester, and it’s my first time to really counsel clients. My current case load is four clients – all of whom possess fascinating and challenging stories. I [...]