I am a mother of six adult children and a grandmother of two young boys and I am also nineteen years into my second long term relationship. I also experienced the suicide of my first husband, the father of my children. In my later years I have been learning about elder care with my parents and now with my mother in law. These relationships have taught (and continue to teach) me huge amounts about how to BE in relationship, and the difference between care taking and caring for. The former is based on guilt, anxiety and repressed anger; this is codependency. In contrast to this, when I am caring ‘for’ a loved one, I am also caring for myself. This is not selfish, in fact this is what love really is about, caring for self and other equally. However, it can be very difficult to know and feel the difference.
Of course relationships can teach us a lot about loss also, and the many ways that loss can manifest.
I did my counsellor training at Clearmind International Institute. I graduated with a certificate in Transpersonal Counselling Psychology, with training in family, couples and individual psychotherapy. Lately I have also been studying Somatic Experiencing (developed by Peter Levine); this is about allowing ourselves to really live in our body -being mindful, instead of running around in a dissociated state.
I also have training in pre and perinatal therapy (trauma we experienced during our birth and before when in utero), past life and regression work. When my children were young I ran parenting groups and was a breastfeeding counsellor. I also spent many years in an esoteric meditation group, participated in Enlightenment Intensives, and have studied numerology, the tarot and I am a certified angel card reader (CACR*). I also am a certified Access Consciousness Bars Practitioner, and have studied Channelling Level 3.