surprising harvests ~ About the GardenDoc
Look at that face.
Despite how I feel, I don’t look like this anymore. In this picture, I was probably not yet five… full of both honey and vinegar. Now, I look older, harder, wider, but I don’t feel much different inside than when this image was taken.
I was a sweetly odd child, curious yet cautious, and very observant. Not everything I picked up was accurate, but all of it was necessary. In the years since my earliest ‘a-ha’ moments, a lot of life has passed, like the landscape which blurs as you sit in the backseat of the car, flying down the highway, hoping for a glimpse of something amazing and unique. The world inside the vehicle was sometimes not as safe as it could have been, emotionally speaking. Lots of don’ts and whys and tight silences punctuated by sounds of the road we were traveling.
Not much has changed, really. There are still tight silences dotted by sounds of the road I travel, but now I get to choose the path, because I have already chosen the destination. My journey may be uncertain, but my eventual arrival will be met by celebration and a more complete knowing—clarity is a gift given by the Source of the Light.
I am a philosophical cuss, given to bouts of flowery yet meaning-full expressions, sometimes in words, sometimes in pictures, color, and sound. Sometimes those listening to me are thinking, “what in the world is she talking about?” Sometimes, I’d agree with them.
I think in word-pictures and people with whom I spend my time tell me that’s both the worst and best thing about me. Impatient people are rarely detail-oriented so they say: “Get to the POINT!” It’s a matter of perspective, of course, because in the garden of my life, the beauty is in the facets, where light and colors dance. Details matter in the garden.
I revel in the minute, articulated pieces of the whole— textures, shadows, and elements captured in a glance, all of which I gladly share with anyone close enough to receive the gift of noticing.
I pay attention: it’s the best gift we can give or be given, and it is rare.
I give of myself because I have been given so much. I rarely achieve the results I aim for, but somehow, what’s left is enough—because I am enough. I don’t always believe that truth, but lack of belief does not alter the depth of Truth.
It never has.
It never will.
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How I got here from there…
Knowing I wanted to be a teacher from a very young age, I achieved a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in Elementary and Early Childhood Education/Special Education from the University of Texas-SA.
In those four years, I met some very special people who would remain steady in my life, including one of my dearest friends. I learned more about the kind of educator I would become during my student teaching experience than one might expect and it had nothing really to do with how to teach. It was more about how to LEARN –how to listen and observe, and put pieces of potentially useless information together into a picture of how to approach the teaching (and learning) process.
My first “degree” was more than the first letters added to my professional portfolio; it created a curiosity about how the human brain absorbs, processes, and applies what it learns. It also taught me (through some fantastic and ethical professors) that my students are people first, and every other label applied to them does not, should not, erase that truth. As vital human beings, they deserve the very best I can provide to them, every time.
The most important lesson gleaned in this early phase was the necessity of starting inside –much like healing, learning takes place from the inside out, back to front, bottom to top.
No sooner had I started my first years of teaching under a man I greatly admired, an opportunity surfaced for me to widen my educational horizons. I was invited to join a group of teachers obtaining a Master of Education (M.Ed.) degree specializing in Visual Impairments/Orientation and Mobility from Texas Tech University. It seemed the great state of Texas was dangerously short of “VI” teachers (teachers of the visually impaired.) I was able to continue my work teaching students with special learning/emotional needs as I simultaneously worked to understand how sensory impairments impact typical development–in all areas (emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual).
At the end of that process, I was certified to teach infants, school-aged children, teens and adults with a wide variety of visual (sensory) impairments, including mildly impaired, low vision, functionally and physiologically blind. I spent countless hours with my Braille partner working all night to create the “PERFECT” Braille document, free of any errors. As our beloved but highly particular professor Alan said, “everyone deserves quality work from those teaching them their value and potential in the world –nothing short of excellence will do.”
Additionally, when you are teaching a person with impaired visual processing how to attend closely to the cues that will keep them from becoming a smear on the roadway or a hood ornament on the next city bus by using a simple white cane and every other sensory nuance they can gather, it’s the little things that matter. It’s always the little things…
During this degree process, I’d also completed an Orientation and Mobility internship in Seattle, WA, at the Lighthouse for the Blind, and met some people who rattled my assumptions about the world and whose sweet memories remain with me to this day. This professional exposure reinforced for me again that people are basically the same if you look past the outside and focus on what makes them essentially human. We have exactly the same need for belonging, acceptance and connections – all of which are developed from the inside out. We simply go about meeting those needs a wee differently, sometimes. When we know better, we DO better.
From those years, I learned that no one can understand what another “sees” or perceives without a better understanding of their hearts and life experiences (in context of the systems to which they belong). We may see, hear, taste, feel, and smell with our brains, but the filter through which all of that data is processed continues to be the heart. I did not fully understand it then, but the die was cast for a different bend to the path I was already taking. Perhaps, I was already a budding therapist during all of those professional steps.
In 2004, through the machinations of a yearning heart and a “mysterious pen pal” with a penchant for cutting out the same advertisement and leaving it on my desk in plain sight, I realized I was not finished with my “formal education” and returned to pursue another degree. You could say I felt God’s hand prints on my back, so strong was the urge to head this particular direction. Though I was content working with my amazing students and the precious families supporting them, there were topics I was not free to bring up with them - conversations that matter.
To explore the best (ethical) ways to focus on those less specifically educational topics, I began the Master of Arts (M.A.) program in Marriage and Family Therapy at St. Mary’s University. I maintained a teaching career as I attended night classes and eventually began practicing with actual clients in 2006 – the wisdom of what I was doing was lost to many people in my life, and to myself, at times.
As I transitioned from Masters level coursework, through the clinical licensure steps, and into the doctoral level process, every skill I had been developing along the way, came into play. I not only wanted to work with systems to help formulate more effective ways of interacting, I also wanted to teach upcoming therapy students the importance of self-knowledge and care to avoid what could destroy all they were trying to build. Although it took me a full five years to finish my dissertation, in 2013, I completed my “terminal” degree, and began another phase of my professional journey.
In the intervening years, the Lord answered a prayer I first prayed at the age of ten, when He sent me the love of my life, holding a wedding ring and changing my name…and my life.
In the space of nine years, every single aspect of my life had been touched; I had been stretched out, beaten down, lifted up, tied in knots, buried, uncovered, burnished, flattened out and polished, all in preparation for understanding, imperfectly, some of what my clients experience every day.
My personal interests include:
- gardening (yes, getting dirt under my nails gives me joy)
- creating art (mixed media, art journaling, doodling)
- traveling
- music
- photography
- writing
- reading
- mentoring
- teaching & encouraging others
- learning, from the inside out (and I happen to be a world-class napper)
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