One of my sons create the people logo above for my Counseling brochure when I was working as a Counselor in England. In my brochure I put this: We all come from different backgrounds and have our own individuality and uniqueness. We perceive and interpret the world, ourselves and others differently. I take into account each client’s individuality and diversity of needs, working as an integrative counsellor. This means I use different theoretical approaches and techniques, particularly:- CBT, EMDR, Mindfulness, Person-centered, Solution Focused.
I often think back of my time as a Counselor, meeting different people.
Today I went for my usual daily walk, even though I still felt weak from the vaccine. It was a lovely sunny morning and I decided to try a new circler walk taking me past Rachel McTeer Park. On the way there, a lady was taking her mail out of her mailbox (still intrigues me that the mailboxes are located on the sidewalks instead on the front doors). We greeted and she said: “You will be pinched today” as she was pointing to her green necklace. I remembered that it was St.Patrick day today (more celebrated in Utah than England). I opened my coat and showed her my green jumper (sweater?). We started a friendly conversation and of course she noticed my accent. I told her, what I tell everyone who asks, that I am German, but lived many years in England. She then asked me to come with her to her front door and she called her husband. Her husband came and started talking in German to me. His German was great. He had lived two years in Germany in the 1960, serving a Mission for the Church in the ‘Rhurgebiet’ in Germany. The Rhurgebiet is my area where I was born. I was born in Gelsenkirchen-Buer-Beckhausen. He was familiar with the name and it made me happy and I felt connected with him. We had a lovely conversation. I also noticed that they had a great love for each other. I am thankful for people like them (I will not mention their names), they made my day. On my walk I thought of them and how lovely it had been to make this connection. I enjoyed my walk back home and stopped talking to neighbors, who were in their front garden. I was kind of told off by one of the neighbors for not fixing a thin tree in front of our rented house that had been leaning forward for a few weeks. (We had not fixed it, because the gardens are maintained by contractors). She went on and on about it. She said that she does not like to see things broken. She has to fix it if she sees it. I said that she is welcome to fix it. I tried to fix it when I came back, but could not. When I mentioned this to David he said that she already had told him off about it too. I felt it was more about her and us not having done it. In the past I would have felt more guilty about it, but I let it go after I tried to fix it. If it bothers her she can fix it herself. In one day I had a lovely experience and a negative experience with people. People are different. My day will end by focusing on the lovely couple I met today.