When I was younger, I remember learning about the Great Depression. I read about the poverty of the 1930s, saw photographs of breadlines and families who had lost nearly everything, and watched The Grapes of Wrath. It all seemed like some distant, terrible period of American history, except that it really wasn’t that distant for
We Didn’t Know We Were Poor Read More »
I have been watching the new HBO series Lanterns, and there is a lot about the show that I find interesting. I grew up with superheroes, and like a lot of adults who grew up reading comics, I still enjoy seeing these old characters reimagined for another generation. But there was one storyline in Lanterns
Fearless or Foolish? What Lanterns Gets Wrong About Courage Read More »
There are some words in our CACREP professional standards that deserve much more attention than they receive. Here are five: Those words appear in CACREP’s 2024 definition of professional dispositions: The commitments, characteristics, values, beliefs, and behaviors that influence the counselor’s professional growth and interactions with clients, faculty, supervisors, and peers, including working in a
Should Counselor Education Be Measuring What Students Believe? Read More »
I have always loved old family photographs. Sometimes they capture more than the people standing in them. They capture a story. The man in this photograph is my great-great-grandfather, William Perry Martin. He was already an old man when this picture was taken, well into his seventies. Behind him is an enormous tree stump, and
Sometimes It Is Time to Dig Out the Stump Read More »
Last week, Dawn and I celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary. Forty-one years. It hardly seems possible. Like most couples, we’ve experienced seasons of abundance and seasons of scarcity, moments of certainty and moments when we wondered how everything would work out. We’ve made wise decisions and foolish ones. We’ve had victories worth celebrating and mistakes
We Didn’t Drive Away in a Corvette Read More »
My wife, Dawn Wesley, is abnormal. Well, maybe that’s not the right word. Special? Gifted? That might be closer. Dawn has this strange ability to know exactly how many stairs there are in every place we’ve ever lived. Not approximately, not “about ten” or “around fifteen,” but exactly. She knows how many steps lead up
When I was growing up, a vacation usually meant one thing: family. We did not take many trips in the modern sense. We were not loading up the car to go to resorts or booking rooms months in advance. If we were going somewhere, it was usually to see grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. Family
I was almost thirteen years old in the summer of 1976 when my father took me to a large religious rally in Phoenix, Arizona. It was America’s Bicentennial, and everything seemed wrapped in red, white, and blue. Patriotism and faith were woven together so tightly in those days that it was hard to tell where
The God We Wanted: A Reflection at America’s 250th Read More »
Today, counseling is often marketed as though almost anyone can become an effective therapist with enough coursework, enough supervision hours, and enough credentials behind their name. Training matters, of course. Ethics and skills matter. But I am not convinced that training alone creates the kind of counselor people seek when their lives are falling apart.
The Making of a Counselor Read More »
We have deer everywhere. Every morning and evening, Dawn and I can sit on the front porch with our Coke Zero and watch them moving through the woods. We catch them on our cameras at all hours, grazing, wandering, sometimes standing still as if posing for us. They’re beautiful creatures, and I enjoy seeing them.
Deer and Great Grandma’s Chickens Read More »