remembers feeling the complexity of both anger and despair as she sat in the presence of a well-educated, but emotionally distant woman. Jenna had no understanding of why she held so much self-contempt― no words to communicate the constant need she felt to harm herself― but there they sat silently in the unknown of Jenna’s story.  Their therapeutic relationship quickly ended after a few sessions. Over the next seven years, Jenna saw several different therapists and psychiatrists who were knowledgeable and had extensive training, but lacked the empathy she needed to feel safe. When Jenna was seventeen she began seeing another therapist, but she recalls that there was something particularly different about this therapist. During one of their sessions, Jenna was grieving over the trauma she experienced as a child. When she looked up― face full of tears― her eyes were met by another who was grieving alongside her. Again, silence filled the room, but this time no words needed to be spoken. There was something healing that happened for Jenna in that moment. She was met in her sorrow, and this meeting became an invitation for her to explore her brokenness and her beauty.  Jenna learned that not much of the rhetoric in therapy is remembered, but it is the tone of the therapeutic relationship that creates a context for change to become possible.  During their work together, it was as if this knowing dropped into Jenna’s heart― this knowing that one day she was going to become a therapist who enters into the suffering of others and helps them move toward hope.

Jenna believes that she is on sacred ground when engaging the stories of others and considers it a privilege to be a part of the painful process that brings restoration and healing.