Wanted to see what would happen, if I put together a place where people could talk about the various therapies that I am interested in. I do "family therapy", teach yoga, and am also a massage therapist. I put family therapy in quotes, because sometimes people get confused, and think that if what I offer is family therapy, maybe they need to come in with their family in order to be qualified as a client. WRONG! Actually, not so terribly wrong..... every time a client comes in, as an individual, as a couple, with a friend, with another family member.... the rest of the family comes in with them as well. That is, like it or not, we all carry our families with us all the time.
I say I do family therapy, because that is the training that qualifies me as therapist. I graduated from Syracuse University with a Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy in 2005. That is my formal academic training. My own personal training in family therapy started in my own family of origin, which I was born into on June 11, 1958. I am daughter of small town central New York mom, and Palestinian immigrant peasant father, sister of two brothers, one older, one younger. So, I am well placed to be the diplomat, and peace maker from my origins, and have played that role on many occasions throughout my lifetime. Long about my 23rd birthday I married a very succesful German Catholic man, successful primarily academically when I married him, but he went on to complete medical school, and do quite well for himself and our family over the years.
We have 4 children together, and did a very unskillful divorce together. Divorce was official by the summer of '99. Over the last years since the divorce, our children have complained to us about our unskillfulness, but despite ourselves, the kids have overall been quite succesful. The magic, people sometimes ask me..... what do you attribute your children's success to? I hesitate to respond with the first thing that comes to mind..... which is that they have been genuinely loved. Why do I hesitate to respond this way? Primarily because it sounds too easy, and also because too many people genuinely love their kids and still have all kinds of issues and serious difficulties with them. So, I am still working on a good answer to that question. Likely it is some magic combination of love, luck, and just enough pain mixed in to their lives to offer them some humility and incentive.
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