MaryAnn Longwell | Photograph by Adam Williams
Overview: MaryAnn Longwell had accrued a wealth of life experience when she made a career change in her early 50s. After years of teaching science and Spanish, she became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and counselor.
She talks about the shaping influences in her life: her early years growing up in a blue-collar family in Bethlehem, Penn., with Ellis Island immigrant grandparents; how John F. Kennedy inspired her as a young woman to serve in the Peace Corps in Belize; and about when she and her husband moved with their teenaged kids from rural Colorado to live in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
MaryAnn also talks about her belief in our birthrights to grow, heal and evolve. She shares how we can plant seeds of hope and light, even when life feels dark and uncertain.
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SHOW NOTES, LINKS, CREDITS & TRANSCRIPT
The We Are Chaffee podcast is supported by Chaffee County Public Health.
Along with being distributed on podcast listening platforms (e.g. Spotify, Apple), We Are Chaffee is broadcast weekly at 2 p.m. on Tuesdays, on KHEN 106.9 community radio FM in Salida, Colo.
MaryAnn Longwell
Website: chipitacounselingservices.com
We Are Chaffee Podcast
Website: wearechaffeepod.com
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CREDITS
We Are Chaffee Host, Producer & Photographer: Adam Williams
We Are Chaffee Engineer: Jon Pray
We Are Chaffee Community Advocacy Coordinator: Lisa Martin
Director of Chaffee County Public Health and Environment: Andrea Carlstrom
TRANSCRIPT
Note: Transcripts are produced using an automated transcription app. Although it is largely accurate, minor errors inevitably exist.
[Intro music, guitar instrumental]
[00:00:13] Adam Williams: Welcome to the We Are Chaffee Podcast, where we connect through conversations of community, humanness and well being. In Chaffee County, Colorado. I’m Adam Williams.
Today I’m talking with MaryAnn Longwell. MaryAnn is a licensed clinical social worker and a counselor, among other things.
Many years ago, when John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, MaryAnn, whose father fought in Europe during World War II, took it to heart. After college, she went to Belize to serve in the Peace Corps. It seems to me that that set the course for a lot that would come into MaryAnn’s life in the years since. Notably, while in Belize, she would meet her future husband, J.D. who also was a Peace Corps volunteer.
We talk about those experiences and about how she and J.D. along with her two kids, would move from rural Colorado to Buenos Aires, Argentina for two years and what it was like parenting American teens at the time in a different culture, in a very different environment.
We also talk about what led MaryAnn to make a later life career change from school teaching to counseling. I was especially interested in this piece for personal reasons, but I think it can be an inspirational reminder for any of us that we too can change course and follow wherever it is that we’re called to go.
MaryAnn and I talk about her belief that we all have the birthright to grow, heal and evolve. That includes therapists too, of course. So I was curious to know how MaryAnn tends to her own well being for herself, for those in her personal life, and for the benefit of ongoing service to her clients.
Lastly, we talk about how to plant seeds of hope in a time when anxiety and uncertainty abound. As MaryAnn says in this conversation, light follows dark, day follows night. And she gives several examples of practices that we can use to keep finding the light.
The We Are Chaffee Podcast is supported by Chaffee County Public Health. Go to wearechaffeepod.com for all things related to this podcast that includes episode show notes and transcripts, photos and all of that. We’re also on Instagram @wearechaffeepod.
Now. Here we are with MaryAnn Longwell.
[transition music, guitar instrumental]
[00:02:38] Adam Williams: MaryAnn, you work as a mental health counselor.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: So thank you for coming in and providing this free hour of therapy for me. That’s what we’re here to do is surprise.
MaryAnn Longwell: Well, I didn’t know, but cool.
Adam Williams: Yeah, of course I kid, but you are this, this mental health provider and we are going to get to that because there are some things I think we need to talk about there that are really important for people to hear. And I am among those people, even though this will not be my own personal therapy session, I promise. But I think it’s so important the life experiences that we accrue along the way. Well, for any of us and how we show up in our lives, but then also for someone like you who is a professional in this field.
And so I would like to start with talking about some of those shaping formative experiences in your life, because I know that there have been some. And then we’ll find our way to getting to learn from you as it relates to mental health.
[00:03:30] MaryAnn Longwell: Sure.
Adam Williams: I’d like to start, I guess, at the start.
MaryAnn Longwell: Okay.
Adam Williams: You grew up and my understanding is a blue collar immigrant environment of your family in Pennsylvania. And I want to hear about that.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah, it was very culturally rich. My grandparents, three of them were Ellis island immigrants and the fourth one went back to Italy to get a wife. And that almost sounds like a commodity.
Adam Williams: But it sounds like a different time.
MaryAnn Longwell: It was a different time. Yes. Yes. The normal usual culture at the time was the 50s when I grew up as a kiddo. And my father was a blue collar worker in the Bethlehem Steel and spent his whole career there, 40 some years there. And my mom was kind of a typical at the time, stay at home mom who sewed the clothes and cooked the food and grew the veggies and made, made a home. Really. It was a very kind of predictable, stable environment.
Bethlehem at the time had the north side and the south side, east and west also kind of like Poncha, but on the south side were all the ethnic churches and there was a church for each ethnicity pretty much. And yeah, I went to public school, had a deep, a deep sense of education that my family really encouraged and love of nature that was encouraged. And of course I was raised with a church experience and from that I got a sense of ritual and sacredness.
[00:05:20] Adam Williams: Do you feel like the 40 plus years that your father worked at Bethlehem Steel, was that enough to provide you everything that you felt like you wanted in your life at that time? You know, that one, that single income home, blue collar, consistent, you know, there’s longevity to his career being in this one place, one employer, and your mom worked at home and that was enough, I think, at that time, wasn’t it?
[00:05:45] MaryAnn Longwell: Well, they were post World War II adults. My dad did serve in the, in the military. And when he got out of the military and they started their family, you know, housing was a shortage, actually. I remember them talking about that they had to live with. My mom said she had to live with her father in law at the Homestead house, kind of. And so they were very much into providing stability, providing enoughness. They both lived through the Great Depression and didn’t have basic needs always met in a full way. So their emphasis was putting a roof over our heads, having enough to eat, giving us a, you know, a strong background, sending us to school.
And when I look back on it, like, they did a great job. And in those days, you know, I was never asked, well, how do you feel about this? Or if there was a rough incident that happened. You know, they didn’t have that emotional.
That wasn’t a big part of their life to have that. And so that’s kind of what was missing in my growing up years, which when I was in college and in a psychology class, it was probably my last semester, and the Prof. Said, I have a bunch of interns who are learning to be therapists, and if anybody has anything they want to talk about, let me know and we’ll get you hooked up with them. And. And I was like, wow, really? I could talk with somebody about things that were on my mind and that were bothering me. It was like, wow, did you go do it? I did it. And it was. I don’t even remember, like, the outcome. I knew I had some stuff that was on my mind and I didn’t know what to do with it. And, you know, so it just was in there.
[00:07:47] Adam Williams: When was this? Are we saying 60s?
MaryAnn Longwell: No, by that time it was probably about 1974. Okay, so early 70s.
Adam Williams: This is your first experience, it sounds like, with the idea of therapy.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes, it was.
[00:08:01] Adam Williams: How do you feel like you came to this idea of, wow, this is an opportunity from where you were maybe raised with a generation of parenting that was like, what are feelings?
[00:08:13] MaryAnn Longwell: Right.
Adam Williams: Why would we talk about that?
MaryAnn Longwell: Oh, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was not uncommon in the 50s and 60s. There probably were some families who talked about feelings and had that level of awareness, But I wasn’t really raised so much in that soup. But I am curious. And it was my last semester in college and I had a lot of credits that were already. Well, I didn’t need any credits. And it’s like, oh, I’ll take astronomy. I like the stars and I love being outside at night and, oh, psychology.
Adam Williams: Yeah.
MaryAnn Longwell: How do we tick? What makes us who we are? So it was just like an exciting thing to. Plus, I had this angst of, I don’t know how to solve some of these issues that were going on in my life. And so it was just great. Like, wow, and I didn’t have to pay for. Was given to us. You know, I think I had a couple of sessions and then I went on my merry way.
[00:09:19] Adam Williams: What’s really interesting to me about this is that, you know, we’ve set the stage as you are a therapist and then we have this experience early in your young adult life. But it’s not like you went to become a therapist right after college.
MaryAnn Longwell: No, no, not at all.
Adam Williams: This was going to be a later life career change, which we can get to if we follow the trajectory. But I wanted to go ahead and note because people might be thinking, oh, well, then of course, this was the natural flow for, oh, no, no, not at all. You went to college and then you went into the Peace Corps after college.
How did that come about? Why was that the path instead of. I mean, I’m going to guess that your parents might have thought you went to college. We’ve paid for this thing to happen. You should go get a job, relating to the degree. How did all of that come together and you went off to the Peace Corps instead?
MaryAnn Longwell: Right.
Adam Williams: And what did they think about it?
[00:10:11] MaryAnn Longwell: Right, right. I knew I wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer since I think President Kennedy gave his famous speech of, you know, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. That was really inspiring to me. And I knew, well, when I was a kid, my dad said, or like, maybe I was in high school, middle school and thinking about what I could do with my life. And I remember he said, well, girls are like nurses or secretaries or teachers. I mean, this is horrible to say, and I feel embarrassed almost for my dad, but he was being pragmatic and that’s what was available at the time. So my, my degree was for secondary education to be a teacher. So I, I knew I couldn’t do blood and nursing and I would. I was like enough of a strong woman to say, I’m not going to be a secretary and make coffee for guys. Sorry.
So I became a teacher. And in those days, one of the talks we got at college was, okay, there’s a surplus of teachers. Many of you aren’t even going to be able to find a job. And I thought, well, I have a stubborn streak in me and that I’ll be, darn, I’m going to teach. Somewhere in the world they need a teacher. And that, that coincided with my desire to be a Peace Corps volunteer. And it was, you know, that was the era of Vietnam. And I knew for me, being in the military Even though my dad was. That was not for me yet. I wanted to do something for my country. I love my country.
And this seemed like a way I could donate. I think it’s a great idea if we all do something for our country soon. And then also the Peace Corps is, you know, you go to a different country and you live among regular folks. And so I went to Belize, and at the time, it was an unknown place. Today it’s a tourist destination, but I had no idea even where it was and taught for two years in the Peace Corps. My mom maybe was not so thrilled about the idea. My dad was very supportive. He had served in the army and, of course, went overseas. So he traveled and he kind of got that. And it was harder when I came back from the Peace Corps because I met a person who was to become my husband while I was a volunteer. And so coming back to Pennsylvania, I think they thought I was going to take a job as a teacher somewhere and meet a guy. And that was not the plan in my head. I moved to Colorado.
[00:13:03] Adam Williams: Did the adventure go too far at that point, when you came back with a boy, a young man?
MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah, it was like, mom and dad, I’m moving to Colorado. And that was a bit of a bump. I think, as parents for them. You know, as parents, we all have our hopes and expectations of what we hope our children do or what we expect them to do.
[00:13:24] Adam Williams: What do you remember taking away from that experience, other than a husband, a future husband, from being in the Peace Corps and having a couple of years of, you know, again, you’re a young woman out in the world. You’re. You’re, I guess, teaching. Is that what you’re.
MaryAnn Longwell: I was teaching.
Adam Williams: So what was maybe a key takeaway in terms of life experience and maybe even something that you think back on all these years later to where you are working now with other people, maybe people of cultures that are not where you came from or languages or what have you. Like, again, if we’re working toward looking at your experiences as shaping factors to how you show up as, well, a person, and then also as a counselor in this world, I think that’s got to be a really important experience in your life.
MaryAnn Longwell: Oh, it was. It was. I look back on it with. I treasure it. For a person right out of college, 22 years old, to be independent in a different country with a job at the time that was in itself having a job was amazing.
And then to be in a place that was new, very different. The easy thing about Belize is it’s An English speaking country. So there was not that barrier. But I had my own little place. I had my own little.
Well, it was a lower level of a very tiny house, kind of like an ADU type house. And I was on the lower level so that the freedom just felt really good. And it was so fascinating to meet people who were from a different culture and to work with children and teach. It was secondary school that I taught in, so they were kiddos old enough to really young adults kind of to interact with them. And just like you, Adam, I am fascinated by people’s stories. People’s life stories are so interesting and how they shape us and the events that shape us as humans and inspire us. And that sort of leads into. As a teacher. And I ended up teaching for a number of years. And what I could see as a teacher sometime were children that obviously had stuff going on in their lives. Maybe they didn’t participate much or maybe they acted out in class or not so much. In Belize, as a volunteer, I didn’t see that. I was young and it’s my first time teaching. And those kids, they were very, very polite. They wore uniforms. They had to take tests to get into the school. Their parents had to pay for it. So they were pretty serious about learning. But once I was back in the States and teaching, I was more experienced so I had more bandwidth to notice. How are the kids doing besides teaching the material?
And there were kids that had some problems and I was aware of that. But as a teacher, you don’t have a whole lot of time to work with kids on what might be going on in their personal lives, to tend.
[00:16:58] Adam Williams: To the emotional side of things deeper than. I’m just teaching science, which I think were your subjects, right?
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes, yes.
Adam Williams: I would have thought of Belize as a Spanish speaking country. Are you saying that English is just also taught and learned and used there in equal balance or what do we mean by that?
[00:17:17] MaryAnn Longwell: Well, Belize is an interesting country. It was British Honduras in the day, so it was part of the British Empire, if you will. Before that I did not know that. Oh yeah, yeah. It got its official.
Yeah, 81 sticks in my brain as their complete independence. But in the 70s, they changed their name from British Honduras to Belize.
And of course, if you go back before the British, the Maya people were there and of course Spanish people came. But as a country, English is their national language.
Adam Williams: I did not know that.
[00:17:58] MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah, it’s a very diverse country. It’s fascinating in that regard. Some of my students were trilingual. They spoke English at school but maybe one parent spoke Spanish, maybe another parent spoke a Mayan dialect.
Adam Williams: Wow.
[00:18:16] MaryAnn Longwell: And today there are Chinese, there are Middle Eastern people, there are Mennonite people who speak a low Deutsch type language. It’s a very fascinating country.
Adam Williams: Have you been back over the years?
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes, yes, a number of times.
Adam Williams: And revisited where you were?
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: Where was that, by the way? Were you in a city, a village, what are we saying?
MaryAnn Longwell: It was an industrial, blue collar town? Actually, it was Orange Walk town in the district of Orange Walk district. And they grew sugar cane at the time. So trucks going through town loaded with sugar cane.
Adam Williams: So it felt kind of like home.
MaryAnn Longwell: Oh, it did.
Adam Williams: You know, for an experience, this was your first time out of the country.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: Right.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: And so this big adventure.
[00:19:01] MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: But at least there was some sort of comfort of understanding. Here’s people going out to do hard work.
MaryAnn Longwell: Absolutely.
Adam Williams: This is how we all thrive.
MaryAnn Longwell: Well, and a funny thing, getting off the airplane in Belize the first time, I think my first comment was, oh, well, this is just as hot and humid as Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the summertime. It felt very similar with the temperature and humidity.
Adam Williams: You would end up teaching, like we said, science and Spanish. This is in Colorado. How long before you got married after that?
MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah, I met J.D. in 1974 and we got married in 76, so a couple years.
[00:19:40] Adam Williams: So this would have been maybe right after you came back from the Peace Corps. I don’t know where you met him. In the flow of that couple of years, did you have that perspective at all when we’re talking about the generational matter of, okay, this is what girls do, if you’re going to go to college, you’re going to be a teacher, a nurse, something like that, or you’re going to be a housewife. Whatever it is, I assume that along with that story is you are going to get married at a fairly young age, you’re going to have kids.
[00:20:08] MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah. Well, I remember thinking, well, I figured there would be a relationship in the picture. Like I like to be in relationship. It gives so much to life.
And it was the 70s and I was starting to open up and look around and I wasn’t a wild child of the 60s or 70s, but I thought, well, you know, do you have to be married? And I question that. Like, we have a commitment. Why do we have to be married? And we did get married and I knew I wanted children. So my pull and push has been, well, what’s traditional? And then what’s me? What. What feels more like I’m outside of that Box.
[00:20:54] Adam Williams: I think, you know, to clarify, what I was describing was maybe the mindset of your parents.
MaryAnn Longwell: Right.
[00:21:00] Adam Williams: And their expectations for you. I guess that’s how I’m supposed to live life. That’s. This is what’s prescribed for me. So then you’re at an age and you are in an era when there is some thinking differently. And it can be hard, I think, to kind of work our way away from this teaching from our parents. But you know, if they were expecting you, had they shaped your thinking to be, and then I’m going to go get married and then I’m going to settle down and then I’m going to work in Bethlehem Steel for 40 plus years, kind of whatever your version would be.
[00:21:32] MaryAnn Longwell: Sure, sure. Well, I remember saying to my dad one time, you know, you taught us to think. Cause we read a lot, we listened to the news, we would discuss things and saying, well, you taught us to think. So part of thinking is we might not think the same. And that is a push pull for parents of any generation. It is.
[00:21:57] Adam Williams: We want our kids to think, just not when they’re supposed to be listening to what we tell them. Don’t make that my problem. Make that everybody else’s problem when you leave.
MaryAnn Longwell: Exactly, exactly. Yeah.
Adam Williams: I also want to get to another experience before we move into where you do make this career change from teaching.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: To counseling. And that is that you and I think at this time your husband and a couple of high school age kids. Do you have two?
MaryAnn Longwell: We have two.
Adam Williams: Okay.
Adam Williams: Went to Argentina for a couple of years.
MaryAnn Longwell: Right, Right. Yes.
[00:22:29] Adam Williams: How did that come to be? What was that experience that led you down there as a family now to get to do this?
[00:22:37] MaryAnn Longwell: That was an amazing opportunity where JD was able, through his work. They were opening a branch office in Buenos Aires and our kids were in High School, 9th grade and 11th grade. And I was a Spanish teacher at the time in a middle school.
And JD offered us this opportunity and we were well, a bit like, what? This is an option. And once I got over the shock, I was like, oh, well, let’s do this. Travel broadens one’s perspective. And what a great learning experience for children to get to live in a different culture and learn that our way isn’t the only way. And being a Spanish teacher, I was like, oh, this will be a two year field trip for me and the children. The kids, they had been out of the country before, you know, just on trips, little vacations, you know, to Mexico for instance. But they were pretty upset initially to leave the town. We were living in Elizabeth, Colorado, and they had been there their entire lives. And it was a big change.
What was really neat was JD’s work offered us a counseling session with a therapist who said to us, you all are going to be having a big change. It’s an adventure. However, it’s a change and it will bring up stress, because change brings up stress. And so I want to talk with you as a family. How do you each respond to stress?
And I thought that was the most interesting hour because I learned as four individual people in a family, we each respond to stress differently. My daughter said something like, oh, I go in my room and I put the music on really loudly. And our son said, well, I go outside and I shoot hoops. And JD said, like, I go in the garage, you know, in my man cave and putts around. And I thought, what do I do? And it’s like, oh, when I’m stressed, I start putting things in order. I’ll tidy the kitchen and put things away and kind of create order so I have some. Just can relax. Control what you can control. Yeah, control what I can control. So that was a therapy piece.
Adam Williams: How progressive of that company to offer that to a family for this reason.
[00:25:20] MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah, it was brilliant. It was brilliant because it gave us some awareness at the beginning that, oh, yeah, we were going to be stressed and here’s how you can get through it. And of course, we talked also about other ways to manage stress.
[00:25:37] Adam Williams: Again with the shaping experiences sort of thing, and what you are collecting in your life that you then bring to when you become a therapist. I think it’s incredible. And not only did you have again, the travel, I completely agree that that’s so eye opening. It’s something that is educational, maybe more than anything else that I’ve actually experienced. We can go to college, but that only teaches us something out of books. When you get out and you get out into the world, the greater world, there’s just so much to learn and learn about ourselves and see where our place in things is, and that it’s not all about me.
MaryAnn Longwell: Right.
[00:26:13] Adam Williams: And so you have this experience when you’re young and without kids and you went there alone, you came back with a husband, future husband, and now you’re doing it with a family. Well, okay, what are the takeaways from that experience? What did you learn about yourself or about people through doing that that you then bring back to the United States and life going forward?
[00:26:35] MaryAnn Longwell: Mm, yes, that was a stretch also, particularly as a parent, because in Buenos Aires, children, teenagers, they went out Late. You know, coming from a small town in Colorado to a very large city, like 11 million people or something. It’s an incredibly large city where teenagers go out at 9 or 10. That’s when they go out. That was a really hard adjustment as parents. But they, you know, there was a large group of international students there and the school they went to, like, that was what was done. So as a parent, it was a stretch. That was probably the biggest stretch, because as a parent, our first job is to keep our children safe and provide them with their basic needs.
[00:27:28] Adam Williams: You’re putting a lot of faith in their friends. Oh, we did at that point, you know, because so often one of the conflicts I think we have as parents is, are you hanging out with people and with habits that we would want for you that align with what we see as our family’s values, in that case, in another country with different ways of doing that, you’re letting their friends lead a lot.
[00:27:51] MaryAnn Longwell: We did, and most of the time, it worked out just fine. And actually, that was in 1999 and 2000, and now we are in 2025, and both of them have kept in touch to a larger or lesser degree with those friends they made and some solid friendships. And, yeah, as parents, well, we take chances, and traveling is a chance. I mean, leaving the house is a chance. Like, we always have to balance our desire for adventure or new experiences with. Is it a healthy risk? Is it something we can, like, make sense of and feel like, no, the value of this is more greater than the risk. And of course, we knew a lot of the parents of the kids and felt like, okay, this is solid. It’s a pretty solid community. And it was. And it was a good experience.
[00:28:49] Adam Williams: Yeah, I think it would be just such an incredible experience. And it’s something that my wife and I have wanted to have with our sons.
Unfortunately, at this point, they have told us they’ve made it very clear they don’t want to move from here and leave friends. They don’t want us to move again until at least after they are out of school.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah.
Adam Williams: So that’s a challenge for us right now, when what we would like to do is maybe take them to live somewhere else and get more of that experience. We’ve traveled with them, but we’ve never come to that place where we’re like, we’re going to go live for an extended period. And now they’re telling us, but we don’t want that forced at this age.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah, we did. We asked our kids. I mean, there were tears it was rough convincing them that, trust us, this will be a good experience. And they did. They trusted us.
They didn’t like the idea initially, but they trusted us. We went and I don’t think we were there even two or three months when they said, we are so glad you made us do this.
[00:29:51] Adam Williams: That’s great. So you come back to the US Is that when you make the decision to go to grad school and make this career change toward becoming a licensed clinical social worker?
[00:30:03] MaryAnn Longwell: Well, actually, there were some rough spots in my life that caused me to do some really big therapy and did a bunch of therapy myself. I mean, over the years, since that first time back in College in the 70s, over the years I had been in some therapies for, you know, the usual stuff, you know, how can I communicate better with my husband? How can we deal with issues in our marriage? Those kind of normal times when you need a little bit of help? Because nobody gives you a handbook for how to. Well, there are handbooks, actually. There’s wisdom traditions that we can lear, but sometime the bare bones, day to day life. I think I’m a pretty regular person. I don’t have any special, you know, super abilities. And it’s like sometimes we just need.
[00:31:00] Adam Williams: A little help and there aren’t manuals for life, generally speaking. I love that you, you say the wisdom traditions and that we actually have a lot to draw upon. We do, but what we tell our sons or what I tell them is we don’t have a manual for parenting, we don’t have a manual for life. The closest thing you’re ever going to have in your life, actually guiding and instructing you, is us right now as your parents, when you were kids. “Those are the best answers I can give you and they are really good ones. And you’re ignoring me, right? The only time you have a manual in your life and you refuse it.”
But okay, you have some challenges in your life and you end up going to. It sounds like more focused therapy, did.
[00:31:41] MaryAnn Longwell: A lot of therapy, did workshops, got through and thought, wow, this was really useful. I’m so glad that I reached out, got some help and I had planned, you know, when I turned 50, I had thought, well, I’ve been a Spanish teacher and I love teaching Spanish. And I’ve lived in Central America, I lived in South America, I didn’t even tell you. I lived in the Dominican Republic for a year. And I thought, the only place I haven’t lived is Spain and I’ll get a master’s in Spanish and I’ll go live in Spain for three months and do that and get a master’s. So I had this plan of going back to school when I was around 50, but then I had all this therapy and thought this therapy really was good. This, you know, this gave me. It was a new lease on life. It helped my family. And it’s like, I wanna. I think I wanna do this instead.
And from being a teacher and seeing like, okay, kids need help, and I couldn’t really help them then. And then I got to see how great therapy was at that point in my life, that it was like, I think I’m going to go to grad school for therapy. What shall I do? And I talked to different people. Some of the therapists that had worked with me and did some of my own research and learned, like, you can be a licensed or you can be a professional counselor, you can be a marriage and family therapist, you can be a psychologist, you could be a clinical social worker. There were all these different flavors of schools of thought. And so I kind of made the decision, well, I’m going back to school and this is what I’m going to do. And then the next decision was, well, which direction would be the best for me at 50 years of age.
[00:33:45] Adam Williams: I am guessing that when you connected with therapy to the point that you thought, maybe this is the way I go forward, I’m guessing that it tapped into something that was already there within you, like the I care about people component, or I have developed this level of empathy and I want to carry that forward in my vocation, you know, something like that. What do you think it tapped into that really spoke to you to the point that you were willing to commit to graduate school and the licensing process and then a career going forward completely. You know, this career shift from teaching where you couldn’t actually have the space to apply that empathy and the emotional support that kids were needing because life is just too busy at school.
[00:34:33] MaryAnn Longwell: Right, Right. Yeah. Well, what I received was so impactful. And that thing of giving back, I believe, you know, I mean, in wisdom traditions, you know, it’s better. Well, what we give, we receive. We always receive more than we give. That that’s happened in my life. Anytime I have felt like giving something, I have always felt like I received more in return of anything. So that giving and.
And it was fascinating to me in therapy how my story was part of it, and having someone hear my story and then they had skills and tools to help me get over my bumpy spots. And curiosity is a big part of it like in therapy, the story, what person brings in is really important.
And that desire to be interacting with people. I am a people person, even though I’m introverted might be hard to believe, but I get refueled by silence, by walking by the river, by being out in nature.
It’s a complicated question. I’d have to really think about it more. Like how becoming a therapist, I knew I wanted to do something, I knew I wanted to work.
[00:36:08] Adam Williams: I think what you’re shining a light on for me, because I think I’m similar, maybe in terms of the quietness, preferring to maybe have space to myself, be within myself, my own thoughts. When we have that curiosity to go into our own thoughts and feelings and figure ourselves out, I think helps us cultivate this level of maybe it’s understanding or at least openness and awareness of kind of the human experience a little better to then be able to be a sounding board that’s of use to others, you know, when they can express something from. From their story and we have done the work within ourselves to have some sense of our story and be like, oh, you know, I have this experience.
What can I provide here that is of use to you? By drawing from my own story, I think that makes sense that someone who is introspective and curious also can very much have a passion for wanting to be of use to others in that human way.
[00:37:04] MaryAnn Longwell: Yes. And there’s a big part of it that’s sort of holding space for simply providing a space for the client, the person receiving, or in being involved in therapy, holding space for them to share their story and then have something to offer to help with the bumps of life. You know, I don’t know that I could have done this work as a young person, personally, me, but as an older person and having had my share of bumps and getting through them and realizing that life does have its bumps and that there are many resources we can lean on. It’s great to be an elder now and have something to share.
[00:37:57] Adam Williams: I’m so glad you brought this up. As you know, I am of a similar age as I am also making a career change and going to grad school for mental health counseling for myself and moving forward. And I’ve had the exact same thoughts. This could not have been me at 22 or 25 or maybe in my 30s. Like there’s a reason that I am almost 50 and starting this and that I feel equipped in a way I never would have been before. And with you and what we’re talking about in this conversation, is this body of life experience that you bring to it. And if we can even elaborate, you were in your early 50s starting on this, knowing that you’re bringing this wealth of life experience and accrued knowledge, wisdom, let’s say, and I would say one of the key things on that is the wisdom to know that you don’t have it all figured out that you’re not a walking, talking, manual life.
[00:38:50] MaryAnn Longwell: No, not at all. Not at all. Actually, when I receive consultation, so I have a person I go to, I still have a therapist, but if I have a clinical question or like what do you do with this kind of situation that someone’s struggling with? I go to a person, my consultation person, and she’ll say, MaryAnn, you don’t, you’re in your fix it mode, remember, don’t be in your fix it mode. That’s a part of me that maybe wants to make life easier for someone or I have to manage my own aspects that aren’t helpful to others.
But it was very exciting to go back to school and as a 50 something because they were mostly younger people. And I could say if There were a 12 step program for learners, I would be like, yes, my name is MaryAnn and I’m a lifelong learner. That’s who I am. I really like learning. And what’s cool about the field now?
Well, psychology and how we sit with others and how we help others. Mental health, the history of mental health in our country, it could be pretty cruel what was done to people at times not too, too, too too many years ago. So hopefully today it is more human supporting and kind and effective.
[00:40:23] Adam Williams: You have said it is our birthright to grow, heal and evolve and I love that expression of it. And I also would appreciate if you’re able to elaborate what does that mean to you when you say it is our birthright to grow, heal and evolve?
[00:40:40] MaryAnn Longwell: Well, my best teacher is nature. I love walking, I love spiritual traditions as well. And on a day to day basis I connect with my spiritual tradition best when I’m out taking a walk. And when I’m taking a walk, I’m observing nature. And I see that nature is always it’s healing. There’s a branch ripped off a tree in a season or two, I see the bark has started to heal. That gash in the tree or right now, this morning I saw bushes that were blossoming.
So growing, it happens, can’t stop it from happening. And healing also seems to happen naturally. It’s just part of the deal. As long as we don’t do things against the organism, the living thing that would hold back the healing.
Adam Williams: Do you think we’re in our way for healing?
MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah, that’s, that’s. I do. I sometimes think we are in our own way.
And, and, and I have compassion around that. Because we’re human. We get shaped by our families, our culture.
Adam Williams: A lot of factors in that conditioning.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: That also then are. Are in our way. If we are individually, we also are collectively.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: In the way. When we say things like therapy isn’t any good, why would you. Why would you go talk and share your feelings? Suck it up–
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: –kind of thinking. Something I love about the way you express that, again, the birthright for these things is that it makes me feel like we inherently are capable of doing the work and reaching for something that is maybe a higher version of ourselves. And so often you hear people say, that’s just the way I am. And they kind of. That’s another way I think they get in their way, permit themselves maybe to not grow is to say, “Yeah, I’m just kind of a jerk. Deal with it.”
MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah, we probably all have said some version of that.
Adam Williams: Yeah, sure.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah. Mine is, oh, yeah, I’m lazy. I don’t want to go to the gym.
[00:42:57] Adam Williams: So how do we maybe carry this idea that we get in our way? We are the primary ones responsible for getting out of our way and the capacity to be able to heal and evolve.
Is that a conversation that comes up often with clients? I guess maybe is one way to look at it. Because I suspect a lot of people, when they first are seeking your help, they might not be willing to accept, oh, I’m the first one responsible for me, rather than the things that have happened to me, for instance.
[00:43:31] MaryAnn Longwell: Well, then that’s maybe where education comes in play a bit. Even being presented with the idea that some of one’s beliefs might be getting in the way of them having a better life, being a more. Just a happier person, being more effective person.
So being presented with the idea that. That’s why I love that phrase, it’s your birthright to grow, heal and evolve. Some of it’s going to happen just because of life. But that evolve piece, and we are so privileged in our country to be able to choose things that in other parts of the world, people, if you don’t have a roof over your head or you don’t have enough food to eat, probably not going to be thinking about, how can I be a better person or communicate better.
Adam Williams: If we’re in survival mode, we don’t have time to sit back and instead focus on our journaling and meditation and eight hours a night of sleep maybe, or whatever.
MaryAnn Longwell: Right. So maybe a bit of it is education, like even having the idea like, oh, it’s possible for me to do some self reflecting and maybe my life will be better, that can be a new idea for people. And then also there’s so much stigma around.
Adam Williams: Is there still?
MaryAnn Longwell: Oh yeah, I think so. I think so.
Adam Williams: Around the idea of getting therapy at all.
MaryAnn Longwell: I think so. Because admitting that I need help, that can be a hard pill for people to swallow. Like admitting I don’t know it all, or admitting I don’t know what to do in this situation or admitting I made a mistake or admitting I have to make amends or admitting–
Adam Williams: Is it seen as weak to want to talk and share feelings, or that we acknowledge our feelings even?
[00:45:32] MaryAnn Longwell: Well, I think this is changing. It’s evolving in our culture and it’s evolving from beliefs. And I’m going to go genderizing here, but believing that, well, and I come from a very gendered background. Europeans at that time, you know, men and women, it was men and women. Of course today we’ve broadened that spectrum. But what guys do versus what girls do, I mean, in my practice, I have more women in my practice who come for therapy than men and women.
I love it when males show up to explore, you know, and maybe, maybe part of that problem is how therapy is. You know, just like when I was a teacher and sometimes, you know, the kids who couldn’t sit still sometime, they tended to be more the boys than the girls. And I think, well, they’re not neurologically the same, they develop at different times. But little boys maybe needed to move around more. And I know I’m making generalizations here out the wazoo.
Adam Williams: Understood.
MaryAnn Longwell: But sometimes, well, as a teacher I learned, oh well, there’s different ways of learning. There’s several ways of learning. Some people learn through their eye, visually. Some people learn best through hearing it, or you have to write it down, or maybe you have to do it with your body to learn. Well, that’s in education and just regular school. In therapy, it’s going to be the same thing. Everybody’s not going to be reached the same way. And people don’t grow the same way. So how we grow, heal and evolve, someone might do great love therapy. Somebody else might really do a lot of their growth going to a workshop, an experiential workshop. Somebody else might do a lot of their growth by going to a 12 step program like AA or Al Anon or there’s a whole list of those kind of programs, or someone else might do a lot of their growing through a program that’s offered at their church or at a meditation retreat. There are many ways to grow, and I would be the last person to say that. Everybody’s got to go to therapy. Nothing is for– We have to look outside the box for what helps us grow and heal and evolve.
[00:48:02] Adam Williams: I think it’s almost embarrassing for me to acknowledge that it’s only been in the last, say, few years where I’ve really come to understand that we all do function differently, have different brains, process differently, need different things. But I think it’s because I came out of this system that we all are part of. It starts very early with school and conformity.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: You know, desks in rows, sit there. Everybody learn exactly the same way. And I think we come to this place where we expect. Almost like we are just cogs in a machine, and we don’t. I don’t know what it takes for all of us, even myself, really, how did I end up breaking out of that to say, wait a second, I’m finally collecting enough information here to learn I’m different. That person is like, we need to approach each other with understanding that we are different and have the space for that.
[00:48:56] MaryAnn Longwell: Yes. So two words that I like to use in my office or when I’m working with people are curiosity and compassion. Those get written on sticky notes and handed to a client almost every time. Because if we have curiosity, it keeps us open. Our heart is open, our mind is open. If we’re curious a little more, curiosity goes a long way. And then compassion, and that’s kind of a word that, you know, words get an energy to them. And maybe people don’t like the word compassion. It’s used a lot these days. But how about just kindness? Curiosity and kindness go a long way. So if I’m learning about who you are, I’m curious, who are you? What is your story?
Because your story, like, you’re the bud on the flower, you know, this latest rendition of who you are. You’re that new branch. But what got you here? What roots? Where you were hurt along the way, where you picked up certain beliefs along the way. I think as adults, a big part of our work in therapy is, of course, healing. You know, healing what still doesn’t feel good in there, Healing what still hurts. And also examining our beliefs.
[00:50:23] Adam Williams: I hear that as the stories that we carry, sometimes we carry them for decades, for a lifetime without ever having reexamined.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: And I had that just in the last couple of years, almost out of the blue, it hit me that the story and the way I have viewed things with my parents and them having gotten divorced nearly 30 years ago, and I was viewing it in one way, and it struck me that I might have not been viewing one of my parents in quite the most accurate light. And so it completely turned my story on its head as I had to then re-, sort of, examine what was the balance of the way this went. Who did what? Who bears what responsibility?
I know I’m being vague there and not sharing maybe clearly what that story is, but hopefully the essence still is conveyed. When we actually take time to reevaluate some of these stories that we– you’ve carried for so long, it can just really shine light through. And I think the practice of that also helps us to open up and think, well, wait, what else am I being really presumptuous about at this point? Because I’ve just taken it for granted because that was the story that formed when I was 10 or 25 or whatever.
[00:51:46] MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or in therapy, we would call those negative or positive cognitions. So beliefs, our negative beliefs about ourselves, like I’m not good enough or I’m bad, or I can’t control or I’m not safe. Positive beliefs, like I’m an okay person or I can have some control or I can be safe, or I can trust those different beliefs.
Right. That’s a big part of life work. And then you throw in things like one’s life is continually evolving, your kids are growing up, then you find you’re a parent of teenagers. And then before you know it, you know, in my case, I see a lot of folks who are old enough to get Medicare insurance. And then that’s a whole nother area to examine. What are my beliefs about parenting teenagers or what are my beliefs about being an older adult? It’s constantly. There’s that evolving word again, because we are. Life constantly is evolving. And hold on tight for the ride.
[00:53:01] Adam Williams: And nothing else is static.
MaryAnn Longwell: Right.
Adam Williams: It’s not just me assessing myself. And as I evolve, it’s that I have two sons and I have a wife, and we’re all at different phases of our lives, and we all have the different hormones of whatever phase of life we’re in, and we’re all trying to process, and maybe some of us are better at communicating than others. And it can create these dynamics that are very challenging in a family, let alone within all of us, where it’s hard enough just as an individual.
MaryAnn Longwell: Right, right. And so that’s when somebody says, let’s get a hold of a therapist and see if we can work this out.
[00:53:39] Adam Williams: You know, it has become more difficult to get ahold of a therapist these days. It has wait lists. People are waiting for months sometimes to be able to talk with a therapist. Is this a trend that you have seen in the recent years? And we can think of a number of reasons for that. I mean, socio. Politically, that’s a huge one. That’s causing anxiety, fear, depression, all kinds of things. We also had the pandemic. Those things are not unrelated. We have social media and smartphones. The prevalence of those in more recent years. There’s a lot of factors that might be driving people, in my estimation, toward these needs for therapy. As far as what you’re seeing from your view, do you think that’s why we are having more of a. Maybe a shortage of therapists, which I assume is what leads to wait lists.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: I’m having to wait for months to get somebody to talk to me and help me feel better.
MaryAnn Longwell: It is just. Yeah, we can talk about what you can do in the meantime around that. But from my viewpoint, it. It seemed like it started during the pandemic. That was a big. That hit people. Obviously it hit us all. And people maybe who normally had been doing okay weren’t doing okay.
And I don’t know that there was a lot of publicity about get yourself a therapist at that time. But what did happen during the pandemic was insurance started to pay for telehealth, started to pay for virtual sessions. And that’s what we all were doing for a little while before we were allowed to meet in person again.
We did Telehealth from about March 2020 and then now our situation, socioeconomic factors and political factors, and back to the.
[00:55:36] Adam Williams: Roof over your head. If you can’t afford a house, if you can’t afford stability in your life and rent and the cost of eggs and all the things. There’s a lot of factors.
MaryAnn Longwell: There are many factors. Yes, there are many factors.
Adam Williams: The telehealth idea, Covid, is going to be a point in time we can look at for having changed a number of things in this way. But ultimately you are still just one person. Just because you can do it virtually through a computer doesn’t mean you have more time and energy.
And so while that maybe made it easier for some people at home when they weren’t able to go meet in person, that doesn’t really change the balance of numbers of therapists. To numbers who.
MaryAnn Longwell: Right.
Adam Williams: Seeking the help.
MaryAnn Longwell: Seems like in life and nature, things are cyclical. If you look at that as sort of a framework, everything is cyclical and the cycle for demand, people are saying, hey, therapy is out there. And as more and more people do it and do not feel the stigma of talking about it today, it’s very common for people to say, oh yeah, I had my therapy session today and nobody’s going to blink an eye. Generally, depending on what circle maybe you run in. So it’s become more acceptable, more everyday.
Adam Williams: Matter of fact, I think that’s where I was asking about stigma. Is stigma still a thing? Is because at least for me, I see it now as so much more relatively normal and commonplace and a positive. And it seems, it seems like maybe a lot of others have as well. But I suppose that’s not the case for everyone in their social circles.
MaryAnn Longwell: It’s their social circle and also maybe age groups. So as young people are doing this and feel comfortable, that’s great. And so your kids. Oh yeah, mom and dad maybe have a therapist. No big deal. It’s as normal as pie.
And maybe I’m showing my age bit by saying, but it’s curious to me if my practice is mostly women, like 3/4 women, a quarter male. That’s curious.
Adam Williams: Those numbers also align from what I have seen with the numbers of therapists. Male, female. I’ve seen anywhere from only 15, as high as only 30% are men in the field as professionals who are providing, you know, therapy services.
MaryAnn Longwell: So we hope that that changes and becomes more equal as time goes on.
Adam Williams: When we talk about telehealth, that means you could. Well, you’re licensed, I assume then just in Colorado.
MaryAnn Longwell: Correct.
Adam Williams: So you could have clients who are anywhere in Colorado that way. Yes, but we live in a small rural area and when it comes to face to face, I’m curious, what is that like, how do you, you address that with clients when they come to see you and say, hey, I realize we might see each other at the grocery store tomorrow.
MaryAnn Longwell: Right.
Adam Williams: You know, how do you manage that with such vulnerability being shared, the fact that there is depending on the person maybe some idea of stigma, they don’t necessarily want to run into you at the grocery store and introduce you to whoever standing next to them as, oh, this is my therapist.
MaryAnn Longwell: Right.
Adam Williams: You know, how do you manage that in a small rural area?
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes, yes, it is. It’s an interesting dilemma among therapists. That is a theme that we do talk about. How do we manage that?
To me, the bottom line is is the client. The person who comes to me has a deep sense of safety, has a sense of knowing. What is said here, of course, stays here ethically, legally. What is said in an office stays there unless there’s harm involved or child abuse involved, those kind of things. And honoring, I try to honor my clients courage for coming in because I know it’s not an easy thing to do to be vulnerable. It’s a weird relationship. Therapy is a weird relationship. I know all this stuff about my clients and really we’re taught to only share of ourselves what would be in the client’s best interest to hear.
So it’s, you know, if I need therapy, I go to my own therapist. So it’s, it is a weird relationship.
[00:59:55] Adam Williams: You mean because it’s not really a back and forth, it’s not very much. It’s all one person coming in and unloading what they need to express how. Actually that raises a question for me of how do you balance being this very soft and receiving human who has empathy and compassion and you have curiosity and you care about the state of their feelings, but you’re also sort of withholding. You know, if it was just a regular relationship, if you and I were just friends and we were in that sort of close relationship type of thing where I can share with you, you share with me over a cup of coffee, you’re going into the office then and saying, yeah, but I’m not going to share like that with you.
MaryAnn Longwell: Right.
Adam Williams: I, I, how does, I don’t know what my question maybe is there. It seems like it’s a little less natural maybe, right?
MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah. And it is, it is. The beauty of it though, and the value of it and the wonderfulness of it is when a person comes into a therapy office, it’s all about them.
[01:00:59] Adam Williams: That’s their mindset as well, you think, is they, they’re just there to make it where I share with you, I’m paying for this time. I share with you.
[01:01:06] MaryAnn Longwell: Well, yes, and it’s all about them. They don’t have any responsibility to be curious about. And sometimes they are curious about me. But you know, in a relationship, in a friend relationship, like if you and I are friends, I’m going to be interested in you. And if you’re never interested in me as a friend, well, we probably won’t be friends all that long because, because I’ll be like, yeah, that guy just wants me to listen to him and he doesn’t care about me. Right, right. You know, with friends it kind of goes that way. But the Lovely part about therapy is this is your hour. And yes, that sense of safety, that’s the bottom line. Creating a safe container, as we would call it, a safe space. And knowing anything that’s. Any energy that’s here, you can leave it here. It’s my job to take care of that energy, to not carry it home myself and so forth.
[01:02:02] Adam Williams: That brings up something I think is really important too, because when you are sitting there for, let’s say, for a round number, 20 sessions in a week with people, 20 hours, let’s say, where people are sharing very deep, meaningful, intense, vulnerable, all this energy that you just keep taking in. How do you, as a therapist. You’re human too.
How do you, as a therapist, keep yourself healthy and well, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, for your own life? And then, of course, also in your.
[01:02:38] MaryAnn Longwell: Work, for the work life. Right, right. So most therapists are in some kind of a group where. Like a group with other therapists to just be supportive to each other, to chat, you know, because we understand we’re in the same boat, so to speak. I have, like, a consultation person I can go to if I need some help.
I personally, if it’s a. If it’s a lot of energy, I have my own, you know, sort of rituals, my own spiritual practice where I can turn something over, let go of it, release it.
Adam Williams: Do you mind sharing what that is or some piece of it?
MaryAnn Longwell: Sure, sure. And this was taught to me when, Right. In my first job, my supervisor said, okay, we all need some way to discharge this. Let go of it at the end of the day. And so what I came up with, I might light a candle when I get home. I might take 10 minutes and light a candle and think about the day. I might put on some music. I like Enya, you know, it’s very nice, relaxing music. And maybe I do some stretches because we hold stuff in our bodies. We hold trauma in our bodies as well as our mind as well as our emotional selves. And so I might do some stretches, and if something is really bothering me, I might write a word on a piece of paper that sort of summarizes just one word about whatever is heavy on my heart that day. And then I put the little word in a little jar and release it, sort of. I turn it over to my own spiritual practice.
Adam Williams: These sound like tools that others could use.
MaryAnn Longwell: Sure.
Adam Williams: Clients who are coming to you.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
Adam Williams: That you might recommend.
MaryAnn Longwell: I do recommend them at times.
Adam Williams: You’ve also mentioned talking with a therapist.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
[01:04:33] Adam Williams: And again, this seems like it seems silly to have not Thought this was obvious, but, for instance, a few years ago, I had a running coach. My running coach had a running coach.
MaryAnn Longwell: Yes.
[01:04:43] Adam Williams: And I thought, but aren’t you supposed to be the expert? Why do you need a coach? Well, that’s a very silly thing to think. Right. But again, I think it goes back to the conditioning. Even if we go back to being school kids, we’re in school, we’re in this system, and the teacher knows everything. They prescribe answers, and the principle is over them. And our parents and the police officers and people in certain positions, doctors, medical professionals of all kinds, we just take their word for it because. Well, I don’t know. And they sure have a lot of confidence. Well, you might think the same of a running coach or a therapist, but of course, you are human, too, and you need to have the same possibilities and options that we do. And. And you’re not supposed to be the be all of human experience.
So I think it’s worth noting that. And I don’t know, maybe this is almost a therapy mea culpa on my part to be like, what a fool I’ve been to ever think that it would be anything other than that.
[01:05:41] MaryAnn Longwell: Well, we all do that. We all do that. One of my favorite stories, and I’ll make it clear, I know nobody here in Salida that fits this box, but when I was in Denver, my first position as a therapist and growing up in the hierarchical, you know, triangular power at the top, all of the rest of us peons at the bottom kind of triangle that. And in my field, we have psychiatrists. And I’m like, oh, psychiatrists. They’re right up there, you know, next to the teachers and the priests and God, you know, just at the top of the top. And then after meeting them and, you know, getting to know them as people, it was like, oh, they’re humans like the rest of us, you know? Yeah, they learned psychiatry, learned how to prescribe meds, but they’re humans, and they make, you know, they make mistakes in their personal lives. And.
And so I think today, less that somebody knows it, like, there are specialists for sure. And I’m a specialist. I still love learning, and I want to know the latest, and I want to have the best to offer people. And therapists are human, and we need help as well as the next person. Just like a dentist. I don’t know why that popped in my head, but, you know, I go to a dentist. Well, the dentist needs to go to a dentist, too, because they have teeth, too.
[01:07:15] Adam Williams: That’s a great example, actually, to pop into your mind. I’m thinking of spiritual leaders because we might place them on a pedestal and expect. Well, then you have this holy spirit that somehow you’re perfect. And then if you see them out, I don’t know what, overconsuming on ice cream, smoking a cigarette in the alley, I don’t know. But if they do something that we think, think somehow pulls them off that pedestal and it can be this deflating, shocking thing again, I think that feels so ridiculous. And yet I suspect it’s the way we’ve all been conditioned with those certain roles. You know, you would look at the psychiatrist. Maybe that person has an MD or maybe a psychologist with a PhD. Well, they have more education, and we raise that higher.
MaryAnn Longwell: Right.
Adam Williams: And, yeah. So I think it’s important then for us as clients to remember that our therapists are human as well, and we shouldn’t hold them to some level of perfection that is not attainable.
[01:08:08] MaryAnn Longwell: If you see them outright having that ice cream in the alley or smoking a cigarette or whatever, it’s like, yeah, well, they’re human too.
[01:08:14] Adam Williams: Well, if we can wrap with this idea, I don’t know if you’ve read the book Languishing by Corey Keyes. He’s a professor at Emory University. And I want to cite something that is in that book about hope so that we can kind of wrap up here with this notion of hope and maybe get some of your thoughts on that. And what he said was, “We need to cultivate the strength that comes from hope. When we begin to have hope, a seed is planted. We start to believe that something better is possible.”
MaryAnn Longwell: Beautiful.
Adam Williams: I feel like, especially at a time when we might collectively be feeling and passing around a lot of anxiety, we might feel a little bit hopeless. What are ways that you are, you know, maybe helping clients or you speak to yourself or your husband or your kids or whoever, a friend, and try to plant that seed of hope as we move forward, that better things are possible.
[01:09:12] MaryAnn Longwell: Right. Yeah. Hope is really important, essential. And I think about you mentioning, you know, people who are waiting months to get into a therapist. So what are the ways people can take care of themselves, grow hope in themselves, in others?
I think, again, I’ll point to nature because we see nature replenishes itself and nature inspires hope. Things are starting to bud out. The birds are chirping. The grass is getting green. Pretty soon we’ll see the willows and the other trees.
Adam Williams: The cycles of life again.
[01:09:51] MaryAnn Longwell: The cycles of life again, yes. And how does one find hope in themselves being together with friends, sharing laughter, talking, just being. Having that cup of coffee together at a cafe or taking a walk. We’re so lucky here, where nature is literally right outside the door. So we can be in nature quickly, be with friends, hopefully easily.
It’s a little rougher when people have maybe lost friends, they’ve moved away or they’ve passed on. The loneliness factor. So coming out to events, taking a walk downtown, reading from spiritual traditions. There’s many. There’s lots out there to read. That’s encouraging, that’s hopeful. That reminds us that light follows dark just like day follows night. Being around people who are hopeful, limiting how much negativity, however we perceive negativity to be. Some people like to read the news. Some people find it’s anxiety provoking to read too much news or to watch too much on social media. Like being mindful and careful about how much negativity we let into ourselves. However you define negativity, I’m needing to.
[01:11:13] Adam Williams: Separate from those things myself, but I heard a good idea on a podcast I was listening to the other day where somebody said, if you want to consume news and be informed, go to the newspaper instead of online, where what we can do is fall into that trap or that rabbit hole of comments which can be so negative and really pull us down. And I thought, how interesting if this ends up leading to a resurgence of print newspapers.
[01:11:38] MaryAnn Longwell: Yeah, maybe it will. Yay. And from a therapy and a neurological perspective, that’s really, really. That was brilliant. Because what we see, if we see an image and an active image with sound and sight and movement, that lands in the brain differently than if you read something on paper where it’s just letters. You have to use your imagination to see it or hear it, and it’s less impactful. Plus, you can just shift your eyes away from the newspaper very easily, whereas it’s harder to turn off that image on a screen that’s made to suck you in. We have much, much more control or power over the written word than we do over a visual screen. Yeah, I love that.
[01:12:30] Adam Williams: I thought how brilliant and how simple and often simple is brilliant. Right. If we pull back to that. MaryAnn, thank you very much for sharing something of your story. And also, of course, these insights about therapy. And I think there are some nuggets within that.
[01:12:46] MaryAnn Longwell: I hope so.
[01:12:46] Adam Williams: There are tools of how we. We can go forward. And if nothing else, I think we’re making a case for talking, socializing, friendship, and maybe even therapy.
[01:12:56] MaryAnn Longwell: And maybe even therapy. Yes. To consider it. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure. It’s a privilege and it’s been fun to talk with you.
[01:13:05] Adam Williams: I agree. Thank you.
[01:13:06] MaryAnn Longwell: I’ve made a friend.
[01:13:07] Adam Williams: Yes. Thank you very much.
[01:13:09] MaryAnn Longwell: You’re welcome.
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[01:13:14] Adam Williams: Thank you for listening to the We Are Chaffee Podcast. You can learn more about this episode and others in the show notes at wearechaffeepod.com and on Instagram @wearechaffeepod.
I invite you to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I also welcome your telling others about the We Are Chaffee Podcast. Help us to keep growing community and connection through conversation.
The We Are Chaffee Podcast is supported by Chaffee County Public Health. Thank you to Andrea Carlstrom, Director of Chaffee County Public Health and Environment, and to Lisa Martin, Community Advocacy Coordinator for the larger We Are Chaffee storytelling initiative. Once again, I’m Adam Williams, host, producer and photographer for the We Are Chaffee Podcast.
Till the next episode. As we say it at We Are Chaffee, “share stories, make change.”
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