While my educational experience grounded me in the basics skills and fundamentals of counseling work, nothing was a better teacher than sitting face to face with real people. While I thought that I would be confident in how to help each individual, , I quickly learned how helpless I was in taking away another person’s pain. I found myself doubting my ability to really help anyone because suddenly, my job to help heal others was not as simple as the textbook said. Those first few years of counseling threw me into deep pain of my own, day after day, feeling like I was failing these wonderful people in front of me, failing myself, and failing my mission in life. Slowly, and with a lot of training and wonderful coaching, I began to surrender the idea that I had any power to change or heal anyone. I began to learn the art of sitting with others in darkness and staying with them no matter the despair or the discomfort that came for both of us. That’s when I noticed people’s pain begin to release and transform to something useful. Usually knowledge, clarity, or opportunity would spring forward after enough time was spent witnessing the pain. I have seen so much peace come to my clients over time and I continue to be humbled by the sacredness and depth of this work.