I love working with a client after a relationship breakup or a divorce because, despite the pain and upheaval, there is tremendous potential for growth and, yes, a new life of joy.
- I teach a class called After the Breakup.
Check www.exco.org to see if I am offering it through the University of Washington Experimental College now.
- I offer a series of 4 therapy sessions with exercises within and between each session that look at a different part of healing and growing from a breakup.
- I have offered a class called Choosing Partners Differently.
- I can do brief, here-and-now counseling, or I can go with you into whatever depths the breakup has opened up for you.
People often ask me, "Don't you get depressed hearing all the terrible things that have happened to people?" And I say, "Yes, it's very sad and often horrifying, but you know, I get to watch them heal and bloom and thrive." There's nothing better.
- I co-authored with Lorie Dwinell We Did the Best We Could: How to Create Healing Between the Generations, (Health Communications, 1993). It is written for both the children of alcoholic/addicted parents and for the parents themselves.
- I worked with one of the first incest survivor programs at Family Services of King County in the 1980s.
- I've had extensive training in incest, dysfunctional families and trauma.
- I'm trained in the latest post traumatic stress syndrome techniques, including EMDR.
Usually about 70% of my clients are lesbians and I have been in a committed lesbian relationship for over 20 years. I have been counseling lesbians for over 25 years and have been active in the lesbian community. So I have lived and counseled a wide variety of lesbian issues.
- I wrote one of the first books on the coming out process: Lesbian Crossroads, (Wm. Morrow,1980)
- Currently I volunteer at the Seattle LGBT Center.
- I helped edit Staying Power: Long-term Lesbian Relationships (Naiad, 1990) by Susan Johnson and Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence (Naiad, 1985) by Rosemary Curb & Nancy Manahan.
- I designed the classes Communication Skills for Intimate Relationships (now titled Keeping the Magic Alive in Intimate Relationships) and Conversation Skills Your Mother Never Taught You with Sandra Jo Palm, MA, and taught them with her through the University of Washington Experimental College. Check www.exco.org to see when she is offering these classes now.
- I have taught workshops on Counseling Lesbians at Family Services of King County, the University of Washington, and various other agencies and conferences.
- For the past 10 years I have done individual therapy with some of the women in a support group called But I Thought I Was Heterosexual . . . a support group for married or recently divorced women who are questioning their sexual preference. The group facilitator, Sandra Jo Palm, MA, can be reached at 206-328-4895, or check out her website at www.2beornot2be.net
Most of us have had amazing or healing experiences in nature by accident, when we suddenly rounded a bend and were amazed by a vista, or when we collapsed on the grass after an exhausting day. Ecotherapy encourages us to use nature's healing abilities consciously.
- I wrote Wild Communion: Experiencing Peace in Nature (Hazelden, 1997), a book with exercises that can help you access your connection with nature so that it can calm you, teach you, inspire you, bring you back home to yourself.
- I have taken classes and workshops on ecopsychology and read numerous texts from which I have learned and designed ecotherapy techniques.
- Here's a poem I recommend reading when you go to nature:
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I come here
to get out of my head and into my senses,
to be surrounded by peace and beauty and
magnificence,
to feel kinship with life,
to feel at home.
I come here
to be empty,
silent,
receptive,
still.
I come here
to be held and comforted,
succored and soothed,
nurtured and nourished;
to reconnect with all the parts of myself,
to be whole again;
I come here
to be changed:
to get a new perspective,
to learn a lesson,
to find an answer,
to heal a wound,
to be inspired.
I come here
to be wild,
to be surrounded by wildness,
and mystery,
and wonder.
I come here
to thank
to praise
to worship
to love.
Ruth Baetz, 1997
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