Why I’m Returning Home After Grad School
After some long resentment and frustration with my hometown and their beliefs about mental health and suicide as well as some childhood traumas and resentments, I have decided that after I graduate from my master’s program I will be moving back to Atlanta to practice as a professional mental health counselor. I can’t really say that I have forgiven what happened during my younger years, but I have chosen to be better and pay it forward. Perhaps it was being away from Georgia by two states or it was with the help of personal counseling after a three year hiatus from therapy. For the last four years, all I could feel was anger and when I started realizing I didn’t want to feel angry. I soon began to feel compassion for my younger self and current self, chipping at the anger bits at a time.
But other than graduate school, I realized how toxic my environment was and realized it was only hurting me. At first, I was trying to escape all the horrible stuff that happened to me in my childhood. But I realized you can’t from from the past and you can’t run from you are or who you were. But I decided that no matter where I ended up practicing and living, I was going to finally learn to love myself at the age of twenty-three. At first I was anxious about my future and if it would be better than my past and present. But then I started learning to live in the present and take each day as it is. As I started my internship as well, the techniques really began to sink into my daily life and I began to heal.
After some long and hard thinking, I realized the people I was around did not know about mental health at the time because it was still taboo and they were afraid as a society. But I feel something calling me back to practice their and make a difference in that community. We can not ignore the seriousness and effects of suicide anymore, those days have passed. I want to be the one to make a change and say that “this is an issue I am passionate about and I’m more than willing to help you out to find your purpose.” Because even though I did not have the resources during my earlier life, I want to be better than the people who came before me by demonstrating psychoeducation but demonstrating empathy and compassion as well in my personal and professional life.
