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Welcome to My Blog




In my work as a Gestalt Counselor, I find myself to be endlessly fascinated with the stories people tell: stories about family, about personal experiences, about reflections on life, the universe and everything (thanks Douglas Adams). As a counselor, I try to be a healthy mirror for my clients, sharing only what personal information is relevant and helpful to the process at hand.


This blog represents MY own stories: about my family, my personal experiences, my own reflections on life - deeply personal anecdotes. One was recently published in The Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés. 


I look forward to whatever feedback and reflections anyone might have.


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Friends

  I had just left a friend's house, and as I made my way back to the Dead Presidents Highway to get home to Chicago. Thoughts about who I had just been with began to roll through my head. I realized that when I spent time with these people I felt angry a lot. I couldn't really say if the cause was the air of stagnant frustration, or the stubborn kind of simmering anger, or the insensitivity, or the drugs, or the.... The litany went on, and on, and on, in its familiar negative spiral. It was like a bad tape I had run so many times, and was beginning to get a kind of perverse satisfaction out of tearing these people apart.  Suddenly an idea slammed into this smugly self satisfying explanation. Maybe, just maybe, I wasn't really angry at them at all! Perhaps these infractions were really parts of myself I was seeing in these people. Maybe this was something like being your own voyeur and not realizing it. As I looked down that long stream of traffic ahead it dawned on me that ...

The Thing

Here’s The Thing The Thing is the source of All Things, Inviting others to it is a gift. The Real Deal is best described by what it isn’t, Making it useful. The smaller it is, The more nimble, numerous, and delicate it can be. To steer the vastness in its movement, A light, but firm touch is required. When the vast and small are full of each other,  harmonies will ensue. When in motion, it is easy to keep moving.  Getting going is another matter. Resisting movement is an important exercise, Moving with its uncertainty, is grace.

A Bridge Metaphor

  Ideally, a relationship lets the people in it have and achieve more than a single person can. How well this works depends on both partners holding up their ends of their agreements. A bridge is a good metaphor for a relationship, since it is literally a physical version of one. Strong bridges, like strong relationships, have much in common.  The simplest kind of bridge is a plank over a creek. It has two support anchors on either end with a bridge in between. If the plank is too weak for what it needs to bear, it will break. If either support the plank sits on is too weak, the whole thing will fail. In this metaphor, the bridge anchors are the people involved. The plank is the relationship between them.  The durability of the relationship is dependent on the strength of the relationship between the people who “anchor” it. Each person in the relationship has to hold up their part of it.  If a partner's commitment to their agreements weakens over time, the relationsh...