Mind & Spirit Counseling Center
Making an impact on mental health, including those who can not afford it.
Thank you to all our sponsors and leadership donors for supporting the 2019 Annual Women Helping Women! Your contribution ensures mental health services for women, children and families who are uninsured or from low-income households.
2019 Women Helping Women speaker, Gina Skinner-Thebo, and honoree, Susan Voss inspired a crowd of more than 600 people. Click photo to link to full photo album. Credit: Whitney Warne, Ivory House Photography
For Immediate Release
For more information contact:
Terri Speirs, Director of Development and Marketing, 515-251-6670 or email tspeirs@mindspiritcenter.org
May 20, 2019, Des Moines, IA – More than 600 people attended the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center’s 21st annual Women Helping Women Luncheon on May 17th which raised $210,000 to provide mental health counseling and education to underserved women and girls, helping to address the acute mental health issues in Central Iowa and beyond. This is the most money raised in the event’s history with the proceeds used to increase access to vitally important mental health services.
Young professional and keynote speaker, Gina Skinner-Thebo spoke poignantly of her personal experience with suicide, prompting her to transform her grief into positive action related to awareness and prevention of suicide. Gina founded the Atwood Center for Women, an organization to empower and connect women and help end isolation and self-doubt. The Atwood Center is best known for its Incredible Women Parties held throughout the metro area on a quarterly basis.
Community leader and mental health advocate, Susan Voss, was this year’s event honoree. Susan has given more than ten years of service to the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center as both a Board member and Board President and is passionate about ensuring access and quality mental health care is available to all persons in need.
“This remarkable outpouring of generosity from the community will help provide critically important counseling sessions for vulnerable women and girls who would otherwise lack access to services,” said Terri Speirs, the Center’s director of development and marketing. “We are tremendously grateful to our sponsors, donors, attendees and volunteers who gave so much to make the event beautiful and meaningful.”
Since 1998 the Center’s Women Helping Women luncheon has raised more than $1.2 million, providing access and care to thousands of women and girls – a population who experience poverty, crime and abuse at disproportionately high levels.
Founded in 1972, the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center is a nonprofit organization with a mission to bring hope and healing to people of all ages through counseling and education. The Center served more than 5,000 persons in 2018 including nearly 700 children and adolescents.
#
There’s still time to give. Your donation means so much to so many.
To demonstrate the power of counseling, we share the story of Carlos. We have changed the name and identifying details to preserve privacy.
“Sometimes it feels like my life is a roller coaster and counseling is my seat belt.” ~ Carlos
Carlos has experienced great hardship in his young life. He came to the United States five years ago at age three. He came with his mother, who migrated from Mexico to search for a job and security. But it hasn’t been easy for Carlos or his mother. Sadly, there has been much heartbreak. Carlos experienced abuse by another adult, and he witnessed violence upon his mother. Trauma has long-lasting effects on people, especially when it happens in childhood.
Carlos’ mother did not know where to turn for help. She works the nightshift at a low-wage job and has very little household resources, yet she found her way to a bilingual children’s counselor, Alicia Krpan, at the Center’s through it’s specialized services for children and adolescents, C.O.O.L. (Children Overcoming the Obstacles in Life). COOL is an experienctial approach to therapy, integrating art, play, food, sports, nature and music into the counseling process. Alicia provides services at the Center’s home facility and also at a satellite center in the Drake neighborhood. Both locations provide the a safe, welcoming place for children like Carlos to find hope and healing.
Alicia Krpan, t.L.M.H.C., bilingual counselor
“It has been such a privilege to help Carlos to know that the trauma he and his mother experienced was not his fault,” said his counselor Alicia. “He now knows that he did nothing wrong. In his counseling sessions I can remind him he is brave and beautiful and awesome.”
Alicia employed the use of a therapeutic sand table (more info here) to help Carlos communicate his concerns, and to help Carlos to understand that he can heal and become whole again.
Carlos and his counselor Alicia communicate in English, but his mother only speaks Spanish. It is scary for a parent to sign up their child for a service in a language they don’t understand. It could put the child in an awkward position of translating their own counseling sessions for their parents. However, counselor Alicia is able to speak with Carlos’ mother in Spanish and help her to understand the process. Carlos only needs to think about his own healing, and not how to explain it to his mother. Carlos can stay focused on being a child.
Sand therapy is a powerful therapeutic technique used by counselors at the Center to help clients process their trauma. It is especially useful to help children to find ways to communicate their experiences. Clients choose small objects that describe, say, their family or home. The skilled clinician will help the child explore their fears and experiences by asking questions about their choices of objects. The counselors helps the child to learn that healing is possible. (See last photo.)
Children learn that it is possible to heal. Sand objects in this photo represent a broken heart, a repaired heart and a patched heart.
For more information about C.O.O.L. (Children Overcoming the Obstacles of Life) www.dmpcc.org/COOL
Jim Hayes, Executive Director, Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center, and Geoff Gade, Vice President, Commercial and Industrial Banking, West Bank
The need for children’s mental health services is great. The Center’s C.O.O.L. clinic is honored to partner with West Bank to make a positive difference for children and families in Central Iowa.
We gratefully acknowledge and thank all who so kindly contributed to the Center in 2018. This generosity brings hope and healing to children, teens and adults in need of high quality mental health services.
Thank you to all our sponsors and leadership donors for supporting the 2018 Annual Women Helping Women! Your contribution ensures mental health services for women, children and families who are uninsured or from low-income households.
by Grace Sherer
What is play? It is spontaneous, fun, free – a means with no end. A seemingly purposeless process from which springs joy. It is the creative expression of Self through every age and stage that says “I am alive!”
Play is about accessing that which is vital – the life spark. Play is not productive in a quantitative sense and it is not about rules. Play is not about winning and losing, but rather about presence and experience. Play is enormously significant for both children and adults.
There is growing evidence that the learning of emotional control, social competency, personal resiliency and continuing curiosity are accomplished largely through developmentally appropriate play experiences.
Play is the occupation of childhood. Play provides a space for the “greening” or development of the young Self. It is the mirror where the child first glimpses its Self as fun, beautiful, and worthy of the time and energy of another. It is where life experience is assimilated. It is where life experience is mastered. It is where life experience is communicated.
Play begins at a very young age. Babies play with their primary caregivers and vice versa. When a parent is smiling at an infant and the baby laughs spontaneously, it is the baby’s first experience of the joy found in relationship through play. These early play experiences transmit messages such as “you are very special” and “it is fun to be with you” and “it’s okay for you to change the rules or create something new.” Play is the activity that allows children to explore and master their world without fear of judgment.
Play is a presence that does not mete out rewards and punishments contingent upon performance. What is deemed “good” is just being together and celebrating whatever happens. There is little room for cautionary statements, admonishments, or limitations. Play becomes the medium for conversation and relationship.
Sometimes the conversation is issue specific as when a child recreates a divorce scene with toy animals in a sand tray. Sometimes the “conversation” is more abstract as when a child creates a shield with pictures cut out from magazines of things about herself that “protect” her in the world. Sometimes play relates to specific coping skills (e.g., tolerating frustration) and sometimes it is just about BEING in relationship (e.g., constructing an airport out of masking tape on the office floor).
This is what play is at C.O.O.L. (Children Overcoming the Obstacles of Life), the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center’s child and adolescent program. It is the fort made from two chairs, a prayer shawl, a couple of bean bag chairs, and a construction paper sign. It is the child hiding under the bean bag chairs in the waiting room and a therapist who gingerly sits on top lamenting the “absence” of the child. It is a child stacking bean bag chairs on top of a therapist to build a volcanic mountain that erupts when the child climbs on top. It is the “Topsy Turvey Rule” that says, “If you win, you lose and if you lose, you win” that a child can invoke anytime during any game. Play in this context is not structured in a traditional sense but is free-form where rules are mutable and even able to be totally eliminated. Thus, a regular checkers game can become “give away checkers” where the goal of the game is to lose all your pieces rather than capture all the opponent’s pieces.
Many children come to C.O.O.L. fearful about being judged, fearful about being “less than,” fearful about losing and losing out. We live in a highly competitive world that tends to promote these kinds of fears. In play, children are often exposed to games that are only about winning and losing where the messages they seem to have learned are that you are only worthwhile
if you win, get an “A,” are first in line, etc. At C.O.O.L. we try to change that up. Games are over before there is a conclusion just to take out the competitive aspect.
“Rules” are changed over and over just because it might be fun or interesting to do so. What is immutable is the caring, spontaneously fun relationship between the child and therapist. At C.O.O.L. we have great belief in our kids. We believe that if we provide a safe and nurturing space for them and materials for them, that they will discover their true and beautiful Selves through creativity and play and relationship. We play structured games but play with the rules. We build forts and bridges and obstacle courses that are metaphors for self protection, communication, and challenges in life. We foster play in relationship and we foster relationship through play.
It is not uncommon to see a therapist with a puppet in hand hiding behind the waiting room door and having the puppet greet the child.
Grace Sherer is a licensed pediatric psychologist, a former therapist at the Center, and founder of the Center’s C.O.O.L. clinical approach. Grace holds a master of arts degree in behavior analysis from Drake University. This timeless post was originally printed in the Center’s newsletter, November-December 2019 edition.
Kathe Irvine, L.I.S.W., Certified Yoga Instructor, and Yoga Coordinator at the Center.
By Kathe Irvine, L.I.S.W., trained Trauma Sensitive Yoga provider at the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center
Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TSY) is an evidence based treatment for complex trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. It is used with children, youth and adults in Iowa and throughout the world. Some participants engage with Trauma Sensitive Yoga as part of a holistic approach to healing from trauma, a complement to their ongoing counseling. And others participate as an extension of their yoga practice. Anyone can participate, regardless of their level of physical abilities and experience. The goal is healing.
Although Trauma Sensitive Yoga employs physical forms and movements, the emphasis is not on the external expression or appearance (i.e. doing it “right”), or receiving the approval of an external authority. Rather, the focus is on the internal experience of the participant. This shift in orientation, from the external to the internal, is a key attribute of Trauma Sensitive Yoga as a complementary treatment for complex trauma, and has been empirically validated. With this approach, the power resides within the individual, not the facilitator. (Although it is important to practice with a qualified facilitator.)
Elements of Trauma Sensitive Yoga include:
The goal of Trauma Sensitive Yoga is to befriend, reconnect with and feel empowered in your body. In a safe and predictable environment, you are invited to notice sensations, experiment with movement and breathing, and practice making choices about what is right for you. Further, by focusing on the felt sense of the body to inform choice- making, Trauma Sensitive Yoga enables participants to restore their connection of mind and body and cultivate a sense of agency that is compromised as a result of trauma.
“Is Trauma Senstive Yoga right for me?” If you’re asking the question, you may be a good candidate for this treatment method. Consult with your counselor, or register for one of our classes at the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center. More information here: https://dmpcc.org/classes-events/
Kathe Irvine, L.I.S.W., is a licensed independent social worker. She earned her undergraduate degree in sociology and women’s studies from the University of Northern Iowa and her Master of Social Work degree from the University of Iowa. Kathe provides counseling and psychotherapy to individuals as well as couples and families. She is trained trauma sensitive yoga provider. Kathe has a special interest in providing holistic care to resolve issues of grief, trauma, life transitions, divorce, anxiety and depression. Kathe is a member of the National Association of Social Workers.
More health tips from the Center: www.dmpcc.org/healthtips
Billie Wade, writer
special to the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center, January 2018
by Billie Wade
We’ve survived the holidays. We made it through January 1. 2018 has arrived. Each new year holds possibilities that life will be somehow different than in the past.
We now face the blank slate between New Year’s Day and Memorial Day. Most of nature is dormant. The excitement of the holidays is over, and life has resumed at a less frenetic pace. We may feel bored, unusually tired, or just a bit out of sorts. Some people made epic New Year’s resolutions that seem daunting as life or second thoughts get in the way or perhaps they’ve lost their appeal. The shine has worn off. The grand letdown happens every year. We may feel a sense of dread as we envision weather-related confinement.
Despite the long five-month stretch, each month has moments of distinction that help ease the transition. January and February are perhaps the most desolate, but the two months combined are only nine weeks, and the time passes quickly. March brings the beginning of Daylight Savings Time and the first day of Spring. Trees and plants bud in April and herald the welcome return of songbirds. May shows off huge blooms of peonies—pink, white, and deep red—and fills the air with the fragrant blossoms of lilacs. Life is stretching itself awake after a long winter snooze. When I look at the stretch and remember what each month offers, the time passes easier as I’m less restless, less anxious, and less depressed.
The transition from winter into spring is a time for refreshing, recuperating, rejuvenating and transforming. On the surface, everything is drab, brown, and gray. Underneath, however, new life is resting until the warm rains of Spring signal that it’s time to come forth. We may look out our windows and see drifts of sparkling snow and icy sidewalks. Or, we may have escaped to a warm climate. We may have plenty to do to ward off cabin fever. Or, we may wonder what we can do to occupy the time. We have a stellar opportunity to create new practices and habits that serve us, an ideal time to ask the deeper questions about what matters most and how we want our lives to unfold over the next twelve months. What is calling us?
I’ve made plans to improve two big areas of my life in 2018, my health and my writing. There is so much more I want to accomplish, but I take care not to overwhelm myself and invite shutdown.
Early in 2017, I created a list of forty-eight life questions to explore. I spend time contemplating the state of my life now, and what I want from life moving forward. I then delve into identifying the steps to turn each into a manageable goal with realistic action steps. What follows are variations of some of the questions.
What do I want my attitude to be in 2018? This is possibly the most important and the most difficult question to ask. Attitude is one area of my life where I have control. How I approach life’s drawbacks can mean the difference between peace and serenity, and hopelessness and despair. I adjust my attitude by getting as much information about my situation as possible, journaling, and talking to people I trust.
What do I want to affirm in 2018? I reflect on 2017 and think about epiphanies and insights that brought focus and clarity to my life. I’m learning to ask for help and to be vulnerable with the people in my life who love and care about me. In the process, I’m affirming that I’m worth the time and attention of other people.
How do I want to spend my time in 2018? Every year has 525,600 minutes, 1,440 minutes per day. Those minutes tick away whether I notice them, or they pass by without getting my attention. I want to engage in activities that are important to me, that bring me joy and peace and evoke a sense of awe and wonder. I want to invite experiences into my life that transform me emotionally and spiritually. I want to invite more play and recreation into my life.
Who are the people I want in my life? I look at the relationships in my life and determine whether they support or cause me pain. Relationships are complex, and I can’t always create a desirable distance between another person and me. I take care to ensure that I am safe before making drastic changes to my relationships. I consider such factors as how much the relationship means to me and how I can deal with the situation in ways that maintain dignity for everyone involved.
What do I want to do differently in 2018? I turn my attention to my intentions, goals, and dreams and choose with care activities that nurture me. I map out doable steps to help me attain my definition of success in my endeavors.
The winter months with the shortened amount of daylight can put the strongest emotional resolve to the test. Dark days and cloudy skies can contribute to a host of emotional issues. Living with emotional upheaval or pain and chronic issues can mean just getting through the day is progress. I try to remember that, back on December 21, the beginning of Winter and the shortest day of the year, meant that subsequent days would become increasingly longer and that sunlight in abundance would return. I know that the darkness and time of dormancy are temporary.
We can look forward to this time of year with a spirit of appreciating and celebrating the seasonal changes. We can welcome each change as an unfolding of the ever-flowing energy of life. We can participate in the transitions and match the rhythm of nature with our own. May 2018 be a year of renewal for you.
Billie Wade is a gregarious introvert whose primary interests are writing, lifelong learning, personal development, and how we all are affected by life’s vagaries. Issues facing black people, women, the LGBTQ community, and aging adults are of particular concern to her. She enjoys open-hearted dialogue with diverse people. The opinions expressed here are her own.