One of the strange things about doing therapy for more than twenty years is that I've started to notice something most people never talk about. Healing often makes people... less interesting. At least from the outside. Think about the person whose life is always a whirlwind. Every week brings a new crisis, a new relationship, a new betrayal, a new career plan, a new dramatic social media post. There is always something happening. They are fascinating to listen to because thei

When I was in sixth grade, our class had an end-of-the-year celebration. The first part was at a roller skating rink. The second part was back at school for a party. There was only one problem. I didn't know how to roller skate. I had NEVER roller skated in my life. To my eleven-year-old brain, this wasn't a small inconvenience. It felt catastrophic. I was convinced I would make a fool of myself. Everyone would laugh. I'd spend the afternoon falling all over the rink while ev

Yesterday at Mass at Our Lady of the Angels, Fr. Vincent said something that really struck me: "It is a great gift to be willing to step into the chaos of the lives of others." I immediately thought of therapists. After all, that is what many of us do every day. People walk into our offices carrying grief, trauma, fear, addiction, conflict, loneliness, heartbreak, uncertainty, and pain. They bring stories that don't have neat endings. They bring questions that don't have easy

One of the strange things about being a therapist is that themes tend to move through my office. My clients never know it, of course. They come in once a week, tell me about their lives, and assume we are talking about their unique struggle. And we are. But from where I sit, patterns emerge. Some weeks everyone seems to be talking about boundaries. Other weeks it's grief. Sometimes it's marriage. Sometimes it's loneliness. Lately, the theme seems to be questions. Well, I gues