Musings from Above the Clouds

(*I initially wrote this post on the plane on July 16, 2019.*) 

So here I am at 34,000 feet somewhere over Manitoba, on my way to Calgary to participate in a 5-day intensive, face-to-face training in Solution Focused Brief Therapy. My classmates are all gathering there, as is my professor, and my first order of business will be to get from the airport to the place where I will be staying – a fifty-dollar taxi ride. Friends have advised me to download UBER to my phone so I have done that. That turns the $50 into something like $30. Not bad! Plus, you pre-pay so there’s no meter running in rush hour traffic, a bonus for me!

I also choose not to avail myself of the Internet on the flight because it costs. So, I am doing this blog off-line, and because I am using a new laptop, I will have to wait until I get back home to upload it. 

Oh well. At least it gives me something to do.

My university is virtual, so it contracts with other places to provide space for their students’ face-to-face requirements. My destination in Calgary is one I’ve stayed at twice before; it is a lovely place with rolling gentle hills, and a garden with a man-made waterfall next to a gazebo. The last time I was there, two years ago, I thought I would not be visiting it again. However, as it turns out, this special studies course became available with a summer institute at the same campus and … here I am, sitting on an ever-increasingly numb bottom and trying to keep my mind active! 

The challenges of traveling to a university campus, three thousand miles away and three thousand feet higher than I’m used to, were daunting at first. But this is something I have done twice before, and I am getting to know how to navigate the airports, taxis, and so forth. I am even thinking of trying out the transit system to shop for groceries! In the meantime, I am saving airplane food to tide me over until I get to a store. As Crocodile Dundee said, “Well, you can live on it, but it tastes like s#*t.”

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My mind is flitting all over the place as the plane speeds at 550 miles per hour. I wonder what I will learn and whether I will do well at this type of therapy I’m studying in this course, I wonder whether I will like my fellow-students (probably), and I cannot help thinking about my youngest daughter, who passed away almost 6 years ago now. Today, July 16, 2019, would have been her 27^th birthday. She is proud of me for getting my degree, I am sure of it. And I’m only a little over a year away from getting my parchment! But today, my thoughts keep returning to how much I would love to feel her arms around me in one of her big bear hugs, when she’d lift me off the floor – no small feat – in her go-big-or-go-home way. She is my inspiration for continuing this journey.

It’s been a journey for sure, these last few years working toward a career in counselling while finishing up my current career in the federal public service. Working for Canadians behind the scenes has enhanced my desire to help people and to see the good that I do, so I look forward to being able to do that in person after I graduate! Moreover, it’s been a journey in the sense of personal growth. I have learned so much about myself, good and not so good, and I’m working on the not so good parts. I have found an amazing therapist and she and I are working through some family-of-origin issues together. I am so thankful for her kindness and her faith in me. 

I would have given up in discouragement long ago, if not for the support and love my husband and daughter have shown me. They take up the slack, run errands, share in the cooking and cleaning, and tell me on a regular basis that I will nail this and be a great counselor! What a great blessing they both are! 

My friends and colleagues also have been nothing but supportive. Aside from one close friend who told me I would have to grow a thick skin (haha, he knows me well!) everyone has been amazing. My sensitivity to people’s feelings has stood me in good stead so far, and I have learned how to take constructive criticism and also to recognize when someone is being domineering. I’m learning how to stand up for myself without getting angry and flustered. I have learned simple tasks I never learned as a child: how to apologize, how to make conversation with people, and how to accept people who are different from me and who hold different views than I do. Those are important lessons, learned (as usual) the hard way. The road has been steep at times. However, I think I am beginning to come into my own, as they say. Confidence is starting to grow again, and I trust that it will do so even more as I get closer to graduation! 

As I look past the next hurdle (passing this course!) and to September, I realize that my first day of my 8-month practicum is only a little over seven weeks away, and I am both eager and nervous to start it! I think, though, that the nervousness is only natural, given that there is a great big “unknown” out there in practicum-land. I’ll be working three days a week (unpaid of course) as a counseling intern at a local church. That in itself does not seem strange, but I must chuckle at the irony of me having a practicum at a church, when I left the formalized church five years ago and have been pursuing fellowship with other believers on an individual basis (not in a church building) ever since, no looking back. So, part of the situation feels a little weird. The other thing is that my supervisor is an external supervisor to meet the requirements of the university (a Master’s degree in a counseling-related field with at least four years of post-Master’s experience in counseling) as there is no one at the church who meets those requirements. And to top it all off, she self-identifies as an agnostic … and the majority of my clients will be church people! (Oh yeah, the Almighty has a really cute sense of humor!) That said, neither she nor the pastor have expressed any hesitation about working with each other (or with me) for my benefit. Bonus! 

At the same time, starting in September, I will also be working two days a week at my job. It will be … interesting juggling the two.  It will definitely be a charged schedule, as I also take a practicum course (with readings and homework and all that) during the same time frame. So, I can foresee needing to spend lots of time doing self-care! I might even blog once in a while… aren’t you lucky!