The Woodswalk Blog: 
Counseling, Psychotherapy, and Psychology.

When most of us write we have goals and objectives: We are sharing something on Facebook, we are e-mailing for work, we are trying to finish a report. Free writing is the polar opposite of all of this. It is directionless, goalless, and entirely for you. It allows your mind to unwind onto the page and provides an excellent window into your inner thoughts as they exist at this moment. In a therapeutic context, it is an excellent way to de-stress and take a look at what is actu

Most of us spend a lot of time avoiding sadness with the general idea that if we move fast enough it won’t catch us. It’s understandable––being sad feels lousy after all. Why would we want to feel that way? Culture reinforces this idea. Sadness gets labeled a negative emotion and is seen as a symptom to be controlled or eliminated. If you tell someone you’re feeling sad the question “what’s wrong?” will likely be the first thing out of their mouth. So to borrow that question

The bud stands for all things, even those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing, though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on the brow of the flower, and retell it in words and in touch, it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing. —Galway Kinnell Reflections on a Poem We all forget, at times, our loveliness. We forget why and how to care for ourselves. And we definitely f