Author: chrysalliscounseling
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Good Grief
When I first graduated and began to work “in the field” – a long, LONG time ago – I knew less about the populations I wanted to work with and more about what populations I wanted to avoid. I didn’t have a niche, but I knew what seemed too hard to work with. I found…
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Watch Those Soft Spots
Everyone knows that there is no act that requires more care than handling a newborn. These tiny little people, who will soon be capable of so very much, are also the most fragile little things in creation. And no part of them is more fragile than their tiny little heads. We know that the miracle of birth…
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New Years Revelations
As we bring ourselves to the end of another year, we look both forward and backward. We take stock of what has been and we plot a path forward. We look ahead with great hope, and with even greater resolve. We determine that in the new year, we will be different, improved, our very best…
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Are You Parenting From a Place of Fear?
I am in an awkward place as a therapist; I count among my clients many young ladies who happen to be in the same age range as my own daughter. I listen to the challenges that these girls have and hours later find myself wondering if my daughter is facing something similar. I listen to…
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See Her
There are so many different roles that black women play in our society. Mother. Boss. Prayer warrior. Advocate. Change-maker. Caregiver. Healer. Fighter. And for the longest time, she has occupied those spaces in the shadows, doing the work of pushing us forward and carrying the weight of so much with little accolade or understanding. At…
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New Year, Same You
Well, the good news is, if you are reading this, you have survived 2020. It was a very, very tough year for all of us. Many of us were deeply affected by all that happened in 2020; racial injustice and social upheaval, Covid completely ravaging whole swaths of our communities, suffering the isolation of a…
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Resisting The Resistance
You do know that therapists talk about their clients with other therapists, right? It’s a very particular type of conversation; never specific to an individual, never even really identifying where the client may fall in age or gender or maybe even race. But what we do talk about are the themes. We discuss the “stuff”…
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Black Women Rock!
Black women get called a lot of things. Loud. Aggressive. Angry. Extra. Strong. It’s like we are born into a system of adjectives that swaddle us from birth, like a rigid, restrictive baby blanket. Black women are routinely pigeonholed by a variety of stereotypical notions that we spend a lifetime trying to carefully sidestep. It’s…
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The Driver’s Seat
Recently, I’ve discovered that driving gets on my nerves. And not just the act of driving, either. I am annoyed by the entire process; settling in, checking for gas, traffic, all of it. Just a couple of days ago though, I traced my frustrations to one single habit. When I get in the car, I…
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The Journey Begins
Thanks for joining me! “Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.”— Izaak Walton. I want to take a little time to thank you for visiting this space. If you are here, you are considering important possibilities. You are interested in discovering a clearer path forward. You are open to thinking more deeply…
Chrysallis Counseling 