In the fall of 2020, with the entire world on pause, the collective breath of millions of people being held, it felt very significant yet insignificant that my small business as a Nature Educator was on hold. My loose ends meant I had the luxury to be ever-present for my family as we navigated this new and strange landscape of lockdown. Daily visits downstairs with my elderly parents with whom we share this duplex we call home. Assistance to husband as he shifted from in-office work to remote Zoom meetings. Face-to-face time with my beautiful baby, bolting into teen-hood so rapidly it made my head spin. This time gave me the chance to notice in stark relief all the effects this unprecedented thing was having on my child. I expected some difficulties in their adjusting, but what I saw was far more concerning. They began to lose their spark, their color, and I thought perhaps they could use a break. Perhaps all my nature-loving offspring required was some adventure, fresh air, and time away from the house we never seemed to leave anymore. My husband and I scraped together some money, and my kiddo and I embarked on a road trip, just the two of us, to hike the Badlands of South Dakota. We’d been there a few years before and they had fallen in love with the landscape, just as I had when my family went when I was their age. The Badlands are a singular experience, alien in appearance in the most spectacularly beautiful way. We clambered over bluffs the color of sherbet ice cream, hiked the back country at dawn to hear the coyotes calling each other home, sat in companionable silence by the fire every night. It was simply nice, and although I could tell they felt the beauty in their bones being this close to Nature’s perfection, I could also tell something was different deep inside them. I could feel it in the part of my heart that exists just for love of them. It was on the drive home again, crossing the green and rolling hills of western Minnesota that my child changed my entire existence with a handful of words; “Mom?” they began, and revealed to me how sad they’d been feeling, how lonely, how hopeless: “I don’t want to be alive anymore.” My world telescoped in around me, and for a moment all I could hear was the sound of my heartbeat in my ears. Then, one phrase over and over echoing in my head: “my baby wants to die.” I remember taking a slow breath, and working harder in that moment than I have ever worked on anything before to not react. I remember saying “I’m so sorry to hear that, baby, and so glad you decided to tell me.” We talked a lot, I listened more, and I managed to sound very calm, be very calm, all the while that phrase rolling around and around. For the life of me I couldn’t tell you now what all was said. Only that they knew how they would do it. Only that they thought about it a lot. Only that they were hurting, and I would find them the help they needed. We would get help. There had to be help somewhere. I sat alone by the campfire that night and cried and cried. Saving my child’s life became the only endeavor that mattered to me, but life doesn’t work like that. It still demands your attention in other places, infuriatingly. I balanced their doctor appointments, intake meetings, and daily commutes to and from the hospital where they went through PHP (partial hospitalization) intensive mental health treatment, with wiping groceries and making dinner for the family, making holidays joyful in the face of all that was happening, making our lives keep progressing. What I wanted to do was scream “None of this matters! Can’t you see that as long as this person doesn’t want to live, none of this matters?!” Slowly, as the months wore on and the world slowly came out of hiding, my child came out of the darkness. They fought hard, with the help of a lot of professionals. Even today, they’re not the person they were before the world fell apart, but they are alive, and they have hope. Hope was in very short supply for a very long time, and the future seemed too bleak and terrifying to face, but they are facing it now with more coping skills and self-care mechanisms than they had, thanks to those professionals. It took me even longer to feel like I could even begin to think about my own life, my own future. When things were at their lowest, I received word that my business partners’ last-ditch effort to save our business would not be successful. He needed to move on, find something else, put food on his table. At the time, I couldn’t mourn the loss of what we had loved. I could barely process, so wrapped up I was in keeping my child afloat in their personal storm. As things calmed on our home front, the realization that the hard work of ten years had dissipated like so much smoke began to set in. I found myself awake at night wondering what in the world I was going to do, in my middle age, as my child began to stretch into the adult hood we had so feared would never come. I still had twenty years in front of me, at least, to be useful and productive in the wider world. “You’ve always said you should be a Counselor. Just go do it already,” my husband said. As if money were no object. As if my last degree wasn’t twenty-five years ago. As if my parents weren’t getting older every day. But, then, so was I. I could do nothing and achieve nothing but gaining another year under my belt. Or I could take the plunge and be somewhere else completely in my life in a matter of months. I was changed by the work I saw done with my kiddo, the way those Therapists worked tirelessly to crack through the shell of the depression trapping my child. That, coupled with my life-long respect for what the therapeutic process could achieve even in small weekly or bi-weekly doses, and my love of listening to people’s stories, solidified a vague notion into a passionate desire. But life just keeps happening, doesn’t it? I had to postpone the application process when Dad suffered a heart attack. Triple by-pass surgery with complications meant a long time in the hospital, lots and lots of doctors appointments, and months of rehab therapy multiple times a week. It meant caring for my Mother as my Father did, until he could do it again. It meant keeping up everyone’s morale even when I secretly felt like we’d never catch a break. But I was determined. I would take him to Cardio Rehab and hunker down in the lobby, computer in my lap, researching Grad schools and costs and classes, gathering my ancient academic transcripts, humbly requesting letters of recommendation from friends and ex-coworkers. Something strange happened when I finally started classes, and as the first few weeks and months rolled by, I started to feel like this, regardless of losing my business, regardless of the emotional vastness of my kiddo’s suffering, regardless of the delay from Dad’s heart episode, this is where I was meant to be. This work was what all the things that had made up my life were leading me to. “I can do this,” I thought, “I can do this really well. I can make a difference.” For the first time in a long time, I feel a calm. Life still just keeps happening, but there’s a steadiness to it that didn’t exist before. I have a purpose again, a path that makes sense. I can repay the cosmic debt I owe for getting everyday I’ve gotten with my child since that talk on the way home three years ago. I can pass on some of the hope, the relief, that was given to me when those Therapists took my child and said “We can help”. I can help others find a purpose, a voice, their confidence, a safe place to be themselves. My previous experience, my years since my last degree, my life that just keeps happening, it isn’t a detriment to my future career. It’s a blessing. It gives me a perspective, an empathy, and an understanding that I wouldn’t have had if I had pursued this work years ago. This is the time, and I am the person I need to be to be the best Therapist I can, to do the best work I am capable of. My Mother raised us all on poetry, and I have often thought of a short poem she would recite by Adelaide Crapsey as I have embarked on this journey: “As it / Were tissue of silver / I’ll wear, O Fate, thy grey, / And go mistily radiant, clad / Like the moon.” Oh how we can shine, when we find our purpose.

After more than a decade working as a Nature Educator, I was heartbroken to have my dreams of opening my own science center ended by the Pandemic. Too much had changed, too much time had passed, and the future was too uncertain by the time my usual client base returned to programming. But I have a passion to help people, and a love of the outdoors. I was determined to pivot, and figure something out. Many, many years ago, before kids were a part of the equation, I had considered becoming a Therapist. With this abrupt change in circumstances I thought “Maybe now is the time?” My family encouraged me, and I was fortunate to be eligible for student loans, but I am entering this field a little late in life and would like the opportunity to pay it all back before too long. Keeping the costs manageable through scholarships would help accomplish that. My dream, now, is to take my vast experience with the outdoors and the education I provided to others for all those years, and combine it with the education and training I am receiving now through my graduate program and my current work at an in-patient mental health facility. Through this combination, I know I can bring science-based, reputable, yet wholistic methods to my Clients, and hopefully help begin to fill a void in current counseling methods. I know, first hand, how crucial time spent outdoors engaging with the natural world can be to mental health and healing. I know, also, that it needs to be more accessible. Much of the nature-based therapy currently available consists of expensive and time consuming retreats that are simply unattainable by many, myself included. I will strive to bring the natural world to my Clients in smaller, easily attainable, but just as effective, methods. I am eager to provide a space for my Clients close to my community where we can have sessions in the outdoors, sitting in a garden or simply walking in a park. I have seen how effective mindfulness can be when our feet can feel the grass, and we close our eyes and smell the breeze and hear the birds around us. I want to provide them a chance to garden for themselves, with the guidance to be successful, so they can feel the earth in their hands and watch the things they plant grow and thrive. I have already had the privilege to watch hundreds of times the awe on someone’s face as we release the butterfly that came from the caterpillar we raised together for weeks. Healing through connecting with Nature can be a part of the everyday, but many people need a little guidance to learn how to achieve that. I was lost when I thought my calling to teach others how to connect to the natural world was ended. I know now, in my heart of hearts, that this is the culmination of that calling. Becoming a licensed Therapist and combining all that knowledge is the next level of that calling, and I am eager to begin, and grateful for the journey there.