Life Update: Loved One Passes

Well it has been a while since I posted on here so I figured I would type an update on what I am doing and life in general. First of all I am very proud and excited to announce that when I graduate with my Master's in Mental Health Counseling I will be concluding my education. Now many have asked but why?!? Well the answers are pretty clear to me with where I am at in my life.

+I want to have a break from school --> I have been in school year-round since August of 2011. I of course have had the holiday breaks and the summer I had between my BS and my MA I got married, honeymooned, traveled, etc. so I had that but I still feel as though I need a break from school and need to get more clinical experience.

+I want to start a family --> Just because I state this does not mean this is an immediate action but it is a consideration because if I continued into the PsyD program I would have difficulty with having a child for another four years. My husband and I have been together for six years and are ready to consider a family so that is a factor (but not the primary reason!)

+But Brandi you want to go into Private Practice?! Yes I do and one of the biggest factors is this! I can still open up the private practice on the East side of Indianapolis with JUST my Masters!! YAY!! So, what do I need a PsyD for when I can just get out there and go do the job I want to do, eventually of course. +I want to do counseling! So often with a doctoral degree in the psychology field the people holding them spend most of their day conducting psychological testing and supervising hours for the MA staff. So, for me that isn't my focus. I am okay with testing and have had some hands-on experience but I don't feel connected to doing it the way I do with counseling. Thus, I was also deterred from a doctoral degree for this reason.

So I guess those are the main things I have to say about concluding the educational phase of my life. Now, I was at a high school practicum site last semester and there were some moments that were more difficult than others. Eventually I was ale to shift to a secondary site that I initially was going to start in May but instead I began in January. I definitely experienced some guilt leaving my site with all the students I worked with there but after being at my new site for about a month I am feeling so blessed to have made the shift. So now my internship is at St Francis Behavioral Health Services. I have been observing and will start working more hands on this and next week. I have a wonderful supervisor who understands where I am at and is helping me grow in my preferred clientele experience (with children and adolescents) but also with adults and a variety of diagnoses. I am glad I made the move from my first site to the second in the sense that I am getting more of a community mental health experience with a wider variety of clientele in age, gender, race, diagnosis, etc. The only thing I can report currently is the excitement I have over the fact that I am able to work with a client that has selective mutism. This may seem random but SM was the training I received near Chicago, IL and was able to go back and participate in a camp working with around 30 kiddos. For a first client at a new site it was nice to be able to work with at least a diagnosis I had some awareness of. Unfortunately, I planned on writing here every month but the month after I wrote last (November 2016) I experienced the tragic loss of my husband's grandfather. This may sound exaggerated but dziadzio (Polish for grandfather) lived two houses over from me and I was able to have him as a significant part of my life for 5 years. He truly taught me more than I think I have learned in a lifetime prior to him. He was so kind to me and immediately embraced me into his heart and family.

Many times he told me if my husband (before we were married) that if he didn't marry me dziadzio was going to adopt me. He taught me about his Polish heritage, about the life he lived and what he endured during the war, and he taught me so much about family and the connection I had to him can't be matched by anyone. I also had been fortunate to have never lost a loved one via death in my families that I was as close to before. I have lost loved ones that were extended family but I wasn't able to be as close to them and so I didn't have the same pain experienced in each. (Please do not take this as a lack of care for any family members as I greatly miss my aunt, uncle, and others who have passed more recently. I had an aunt pass away that I truly loved and had always wanted to be more closely connected to but was unable to see but yearly since I was 18. I also had an uncle pass away that I have very fond memories of being with him with my foster family when I was young and even riding a motorcycle with him. I greatly miss them all and hope they all rest in peace and have a great time in heaven). Due to my dziadzio passing my husband and I are now remodeling the house he lived in and it will become our forever home. We are of course doing a lot of work on it and it adds to all the work and stuff we are doing but it will be well worth it in the end. We are forever grateful for the help and support his parents have also provided us with in getting this all started and completed. If we stay on the timeline that is planned we will move into our forever home in July of this year! There is some excitement, especially now after we have had some mourning time, in this new change that we are about to undergo as a couple. My last bit of news for all my readers is my excitement over a new opportunity that my mother-in-law (MIL) is providing me! As a graduation gift my MIL is taking me with her to Edinburgh, Scotland to visit my hubby's cousin and to enjoy another country! I am so very excited because we were able to find some Harry Potter tours and places to go for the HP enthusiast, which of course I am! So in June I will be going away for 10 days and will be able to have a fun thing to do before I graduate and enter the working world in July/August.