Why I Became a Therapist

Ever since I was a young person, I have been drawn to what I now call “life beneath the surface.” I was curious to understand my own emotional and psychological world, and could sense this world and its deep stirrings in others. I was introspective, even as a child, and endlessly interested in the inner life of others, especially those lives that were somehow touched by hardship. As the daughter of an alcoholic mother who succumbed to a debilitating lifelong depression and died of cancer at the age of 42, I was not required to look far, but I was also aware of the suffering of others, and the tenacious determination of the human spirit and psyche to endure even the most extreme forms of oppression.

Personally, I began to believe that while some forms of suffering are immutable, that others could be transformed, and that as individuals we can exercise some measure of influence upon our destinies, even our psychological destinies.

While therapy offers only one of many avenues for such an endeavor, when I discovered its value in my own life, I knew I wanted to offer its it to others.

While informed by the wisdom of many mentors and teachers, some of what I have most learned has been from my clients themselves, and their brave willingness to explore and share what is most real in their hearts and lives, as well my own search for broader understanding and meaning about the mysterious, often joyful and sometimes achingly sorrowful experience of living as mortal, sentient beings in our often perplexing and imperfect human world.

THE JOURNEY

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

  - Mary Oliver