What do you bring to the counseling relationship?

I believe in you, for you, until you can believe it yourself. That is what I bring to a therapeutic relationship. My job is to work myself right out of a job, to help you dismantle the wall of denial/self-doubt/self-destructive behavior brick by brick until there you are. A person who seeks help needs to be taught to find, respect, and ultimately cherish their own gifts and strengths, to recognize the dysfunctional dynamics they live by and to move into a new way of life.

My family is a case study in dysfunction. Interestingly, substance abuse was not a factor in the dysfunction while I was a child, but has manifested in this generation. If there is an abuse that I didn’t suffer (along with my siblings), I have yet to discover it. Verbal, emotional, spiritual, physical, sexual, --name one and I’ll tell you a personal story. I have been in the darkest pit of fear and despair and done immensely destructive things to deal with the pain—addictive eating, blaming, self-mutilation, raging—the only reason I didn’t off myself is that I didn’t want to miss my girls growing up.

But that isn’t the most important part of the story—the most important part is that the story isn’t over yet. I am not defined by my abuse, nor am I defined by my “survivorship.”

My identity is first my name: Alice Katherine, which means “Truth” and “Purity.” Cool, huh? And it flows from there: the pure truth is I am intuitive, perceptive, tender-hearted, called to minister, a fallen human being who is determined to find the joy in this fallen world and to share it. We all, every one of us, were born innocent and deserve to be that again—fresh and new, ready to face the world with a foundation of love and acceptance—that is what I can provide: the hope realized that we do not have to be a prisoner to our past. That path, that door to a new life is to be discovered by each person in her own journey.