Wow! I did it! I submitted my application to Goddard! I didn't expect it to feel so exhilirating, but I'm downright dizzy! There's something so movementy about the commitment of applying. It's different from when I signed up for a couple of classes at NCSC in Ohio, to see how my post-injured brain would cope. This is about the long haul. It's about spending seven years in school, most likely.

In a very Not Like Me move, I've decided that I don't want to transfer credits in. Goddard's program is so individualized that I don't see the point. The transferred classes would just eat up electives that could be better filled by things central to my courses of study. I don't want to give that up.

I've spent years thinking, envisioning, considering, questing. It's taken since 2003 to get clear about how I want to bring the pieces together. Submitting my application is a declaration of sorts, a way of saying, "Ok. I'm done sketching. The paint's going on the canvas."

And to have the job come up that nestles in so closely. I'm in that rare and heady space of Flow, where every single thing seems to be traveling in harmony to support something wonderful.

If you are interested, I'm tucking my application essays behind the cut. I'm proud of them, but will not have my feelings hurt if it's way the hell more than you want to read.

Meanwhile, lest you fear that I am drunk on the flawless perfection of my new environs, let me assure you that some of its perfection can be measured by the quirky, and sometimes disgusting, anomalies that pop up, here and there. After I post this, I'm going to write another post, devoted to one such gem of a weirdness.

Application Essays

“Love is a condition so powerful it may be that which holds the stars in the firmament. It may be that which pushes and urges the blood in the veins.”

– Maya Angelou


What do you intend to study?

I plan to study psychology and ethnobotany as an undergraduate, with the intention of continuing at Goddard to become a licensed psychotherapist.


How have your life experiences prepared you to study these areas?

When I view my life as a story, themes weave in and out across years, events, relationships, and life phases. Chief among them are: independent thought; curiosity about people and relationships; a keen appreciation for the structural patterns underlying circumstantial content; an analytical orientation; a passionate dedication to issues of social justice, human dignity, and the nature of equality; a gift for finding the humor in almost any situation; a commitment to the idea that How matters at least as much as What; the desire to do well; the willingness to try something and get it fantastically wrong; creativity; the wisdom to know that what I think and believe today is subject to change; and an absolute understanding that it is impossible for humans to divorce themselves from the natural world, much less their inherently divine essence – no matter what. I got an award in kindergarten: Most Enthusiastic. It was both accurate and predictive.

There are themes of struggle as well, platforms for the kind of growth that can only occur in response to living life v. thinking about living life. Twenty years ago these elements had the power to derail me, inspire a sense of defeat, make me wonder if I’d ever become the kind of adult I admired: the ones who weren’t terrified by encountering another challenge or deficit; who embraced themselves as worthy in the present moment; who laughed at themselves, easily and with affection; and who had a circle of strong and loving peers, engaged in their own journeys and processes.

I grew up in a chaotic, pain-riddled home comprised of sensitive, passionate, wounded people doing their best to address issues of personal survival and community citizenship. It was a complicated mix: inspiring and abusive, simultaneously. The atmosphere was inconsistent and confusing for everyone, but not without its own gifts and mercies.

The first and greatest mercy occurred when my parents split up. The second occurred in stages, as various among us embarked upon focused healing work, each gravitating toward the elements that best suited his recovery. The third is the current atmosphere of (mostly) healthy intimacy that exists among us. It does not escape my notice that this state of affairs is as rare as it is blessed. We were gifted with advantages of privilege: from familial generations of wealth and education, to skin color, to modest affluence within our own home. My father was a professor at a state university and what that meant in the late 1960s was a five bedroom, three-and-a-half bath, finished basement, corner lot, brick home in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

Our advantages were more than merely material. My parents were committed to environmentalism, civil rights and other social justice issues, and the absolute necessity to define and extend one’s sense of personal community to include those whose circumstances caused one internal dissonance. They helped me leap the gulf between immobilizing guilt and shame (about having so much when others had so little) and connecting with people, offering myself in service and support from a posture of human peership. I learned that dignity is not earned by dint of economic status, personal hygiene, intelligence, physical abilities, or any other external measure. I learned that dignity is an inherent right and that worthiness is a function of the fact of existence. I learned that these concepts are intrinsic to understanding the nature of love.

As a family, we worked with residents of the Cleveland neighborhoods of Hough and Glenville, to pick up trash, establish green space, rebuild after the riots. We volunteered in a group home for developmentally delayed adults. We attended talks by Dr. Helen Caldicott, Desmond Tutu, Jesse Jackson, and other leading thinkers of the time. We took a bus to Washington, D.C. to attend the 20th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. My parents participated in projects to expose and correct illegal and racist real estate practices. We spent countless hours in the woods, at ponds and creeks, in museums, at concerts, or rambling on the family farm. There was consistent emphasis on the fact of being connected to, and part of, all that is.

Independent of my family I sought solitude, compelled to reflection. At age five, I was fascinated by flowers; their colors, scents, growing habits, and sheer variety overwhelmed my mind. One day, I lay flat on my belly contemplating a pansy. I was absorbed by a single question: How did the yellow know where to stop and the purple know where to start? After a long interval, knowing coursed through my whole self, as simple and obvious as a smile: “God” was how the yellow and purple knew what to do. God’s consciousness was present in every particle of that flower. In the same instant, I understood that the same was true of those comprising my own body and self. (This was not a God of religion. God was simply the only word I knew to use in order to embody infinite and omnipresent love.)

The fascination of that moment’s recognition has never paled. I remain curious about how this presence manifests and the degree to which our multiple awarenesses and intelligences influence the manner in which we experience our lives. If our every cell contains divine presence, does this extend to our every thought? If so, how does that reconcile with our cultural constructs of Good and Evil? If not, where does the division occur, and to what extent? What role does emotion play? While I doubt the span of my lifetime will produce a full complement of answers, I hope that I’ll keep coming up with questions.

At sixteen, I knew that one career would never suffice because my interests were too many, and too varied. I started off as a professional musician, and enjoyed eleven years in that industry. The final six years were spent as a member and managing partner in a band fortunate enough to tour most of the U.S., including Alaska. In early 1989, we were selected to tour Asia as part of the Department of Defense’s Overseas Shows program. It was an unusual marriage, given that the band played reggae and world beat music – often with a pointedly political emphasis inconsistent with the policies of President George H. W. Bush and his administration. The tour re-ignited my conscious consideration of the issues of dignity, human peership, the risks and rewards of independent thought, and the importance of remaining curious – even when things seem obvious.

An excellent example has to do with the widely publicized “student demonstrations” occurring in Seoul, South Korea in the late 1980s:

Before we left the U.S. for Asia, we were counseled by our DoD advisors to make sure that nothing on our clothing or luggage had the words “America”, “United States”, “Washington, “New York”, “Department of Defense”, etc., visible. We were warned that, particularly in South Korea, this would make us targets for acts of terrorism ranging from simple vandalism or theft, to kidnapping and torture. Reports of Molotov cocktail-wielding anti-American rioters and North Korean undercover insurgents were presented as threatening and daily realities faced by Americans visiting the country, or stationed there in service to the citizens of the United States. We were encouraged to allow people assume we were Canadians.

We arrived by commercial carrier at 10 PM, local time. Our escorts were not there to meet us. None of us had thought to bring a translation dictionary. We had a literal ton of musical equipment and cases in tow. I received special scrutiny because of my gear; I had a large black nylon bag that contained the pieces of a tiered stand made of black anodized aluminum, and assembled with a series of plastic and metal screws, clips, and handles. The soldiers in the airport thought it was a weapon, perhaps something like a bazooka or grenade-launcher. They separated me from the rest of the group, gesturing and shouting, guns unslung. I pantomimed a request to be allowed to take it out of the bag, assemble it, and demonstrate its purpose. After nearly forty-five minutes they relented, though they insisted upon taking each piece out of the bag and inspecting it before handing to me. Once they understood the nature of its use, and saw a keyboard placed upon it, they relaxed and relented. Not long after, our escorts and translator arrived.

Two days later, as we traveled in our unmarked bus through Seoul, we encountered a traffic jam of proportions I’d never conceived, much less experienced. With six lanes in each direction completely stopped -- occupied by an assortment of double-rigged semis; bicycles with washing machine motors and milk jug gas tanks, piled high with crates of live chickens; cars; vans; buses; and scooters – it was anyone’s guess what was holding things up. Our driver motioned us to the windows on the left side of the bus and we saw a quiet crowd of college-aged Koreans walking slowly, holding up signs. No chanting or yelling. No fighting. Across from the demonstrators stood a solid line of Korean police officers wearing riot gear. They were not confronting the demonstrators, or even blocking their progress; they were making a barrier to ensure that the demonstrators would be protected from traffic entering from alleys and side roads. The demonstration lasted about thirty minutes, after which the participants and police officers melted away, peacefully and without incident. We returned to our seats and discovered dozens of fliers and pamphlets that had been slipped in through the windows on the right side of the bus as we gazed out of the windows on the left side of the bus.

Our translator read the materials to us, at our request. Most were politely worded essays and shorter works requesting that their president please return to the negotiating table at Pan Mun Jom to continue talks with North Korea about reunification. Others were similar entreaties directed to then-president Bush, who was coming for a visit, asking him to use his influence to encourage their president to resume negotiations with the North Korean president. This peaceful demonstration was later characterized as a “riot” by various American newspapers.

We experienced several more such demonstrations during our time in South Korea and witnessed only one act of violence, which was carried out by a small group of people unaffiliated with the demonstrators. They ran into the square from an alley and tossed half a dozen Molotov cocktails at the demonstrators and police, alike. No one was injured, though the awning of a shop was burned. I never read or heard a journalistic report that reflected my direct experience of these events.

From the pre-trip briefing, the airport confrontation, and witnessing the discordant characterization of the demonstrations, I learned about the politics of fear, the manipulation of perception, and the fact that, for some, there is value in reinforcing the construct of Hostile Otherness. I became more circumspect about what I read and heard if it was not part of my direct experience. From conversations with Koreans old enough to remember the war and those just entering adulthood, I learned that it is foolish to assume that I can know what is best or even fully understand the issues of a culture that is not my own.

In addition to South Korea, we visited mainland Japan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Manila airport, and Guam. I learned about the nature of commitment from people who signed contracts holding their lives forfeit and at the disposal of whatever government happened to come into power during their military tenure. I witnessed the breath-taking recovery of nature in the jungles of Iwo Jima – an island stripped of all life at the conclusion of WWII. I saw the sobriety of battle-seasoned soldiers and the adolescent hubris of the untried. I was humbled and confused by the Japanese octogenarian who cried and pressed gifts into our hands, thanking us for taking the time to visit the memorial peace park at Hiroshima. I learned the grace of reaching beyond forgiveness to recognition and connection.

My next career was a split track. I enrolled in massage school and got a job in a financial products marketing firm to support myself. As I pondered questions of professional ethics and technique in school, I pondered questions of human ethics and complex data relationships at work. In both arenas I focused on what it meant to connect. I wondered how best to circumvent the illusions of unnecessary separation, to create an atmosphere of safety in which actual people could do actual work. At school, this meant: learning how to tune in – taking stock of my self and my “stuff”, striving to become as clear a channel as possible; learning to listen beyond my assumptions and prejudices; resisting the urge to push clients to meet my expectations, my schedule; accepting that these topics could not be addressed one time and put away, that “work in progress” is a lifetime mantra, that supervision is part of healthy practice. At work, it meant: struggling to find a balance between expressing my enthusiasm and having that excitement intimidate my less effusive colleagues; taking risks to break down corporate habits of behavior – like walking into a client meeting and sitting on the client “side” of the conference table (to me, it was about establishing that the purpose of the meeting was to work together to address issues meaningful to both companies); learning to interact with people at every hierarchical level, carrying an inherent sense of equality while acknowledging their position and expertise; demonstrating the reality that questions of dignity exist for everyone, from the entry level co-coordinator who doesn’t know the rituals of a conference call to the executive appointed to a committee responsible for designing and implementing an enterprise-comprehensive database – despite not having a computer on his own desk.

Then, on a business trip to my home town in 1997, I fell approximately twenty feet, and everything changed. My brain and body experienced significant mechanical injuries. My soul and spirit were traumatized, at least as much by the appalling quality of care I received, as by the functional damage. Doctors were grim when delivering prognostic information: I would lose my left leg. I would never walk without supporting devices, even with a prosthetic leg. I would have debilitating pain forever.

Competent surgeons, good genes, and an outstanding physical therapist account for a good portion of the final outcome: I still have my leg, I have no movement restrictions, and I have no pain. My independent mind, willingness to trust my intuition, inherent kinesthetic orientation, and affinity for hard work provided another piece. Underscoring both were ribbons of connection to animals, plants, divine order, air, and water. Holding a snow ball and inhaling sharp lungfuls of frigid air were as healing as the prescribed anti-inflammatories. Lying in the grass, staring up at black and white oak trees, listening to birds, insects, and the soil’s own breath brought me great peace. Leaning my sore back against enormous sun-warmed boulders offered me support and relaxation unequaled by other therapeutic modalities.

The injuries to my body and the damage to my brain afforded me gifts and the deconstruction of my internal defenses. My progress in psychotherapy accelerated. Shame dropped away like the ill-fitting robe it always is. Joy filled in dusty cracks and dissolved illusions. I found healing in the act of creating visual art. I developed the capacity to extend to myself the compassion and kindness I’d reserved for anyone who wasn’t me. I felt rich.

Temporarily sidelined from doing bodywork, I focused on my affinity for how information flows within a business and my ability to play the role of translator: helping business people and software engineers understand one another with a minimum of frustration. I was successful at this and moved up through the ranks at several companies – some of which were purchased by bigger companies and some of which died in the atomic dot-bomb. By 2003 I was the president of a small technology consulting and custom-software firm. The higher I rose, the less I enjoyed my work. I missed the communal problem-solving and the project work. I began a personal vision quest to figure out what I might do next. I asked any and every person I knew what kind of work they could picture me doing. Three main occupations came up, nearly to the exclusion of any others: writer, psychotherapist, full-time social activist.

In January of 2004 I asked the CEO to let me go, citing that the company couldn’t thrive if the president hated coming to work every day. He asked what my plans were, and I said that I’d decided resume the path of practicing healing bodywork as my primary occupation. “What a waste of a marvelous brain,” he said. “Thanks!” I smiled, and packed up my office. I signed up for classes through the Upledger Institute. A five year, live-in relationship drew to a close around the same time, and I moved to Ohio to regroup, continue studying, and to begin working full-time as a massage therapist. I spent the next four years doing just that.

A gift from injuring my brain is the space made available for intuitive and non-linear aspects to blossom. Losses in more straightforward cognition have been challenging to accommodate, but the overall outcome is much more balanced and interesting than what I had before. I know for a fact that it has everything to do with the kind of clinician I have become. I have faith in what my hands and intuition tell me, beyond what is contained in diagnostic and referral documentation. Here is an example that is not typical in timeline, but illustrates the point:

“Jane”, a thirty-eight-year-old mother and homemaker came to the physical therapy clinic with a debilitating headache. She had not experienced a day’s relief in sixteen years. It had come on “out of nowhere” and never let up. She’d been through many kinds of therapy: drugs, exercise, biofeedback, psychotherapy, etc. Nothing had worked. The only reason she came to our clinic was a friend’s relentless pushing. Jane wanted to “shut [her] friend up” and resume coping as best she could with what she was resigned to as a permanent condition.

I did a standard assessment and found myself drawn to her lumbar spine. This was inconsistent with the diagnostic information in her records, and the prescription only mentioned the headache. Following my hands, I began a gentle assessment of the connective tissue of her low-back. She was supine, chatting about nothing in particular. As I zeroed in on some slightly thickened tissue lateral to the lumbar vertebrae, her speech became animated and she began a monologue about the birth of her son.

The tissue unwound as she talked, and softened as she told the story about the trauma related to the processes of his birth. The epidural hadn’t worked and “they kept trying it anyway” for a total of four times. It was clear to me that the scar tissue in my hands was related to those efforts.

After a while, her energy slowed, her breathing became deeper and more relaxed, and she stopped talking. When the tissue in her back achieved a resting point, I asked: “Jane, how old is your son?” “Sixteen... Oh my God! The headache started that night!” She began to cry softly as the realization filtered through her consciousness and her body. After about five minutes, the tears subsided. I checked in with her and received a quietly astonished, “My head doesn’t hurt!’ in response.

She was pain-free for three days before the headache began to creep back. She came for another appointment on day four and it was nearly full-strength again. I did a normal ten-step craniosacral treatment, followed by specific focus to the occiput and sphenoid bones, and ended with Reiki. The headache was gone about twenty minutes into the session and, as of two years later, never returned.

Jane’s story has a fairytale quality, owing to the rapid resolution of the physical conditions and the restoration of other life elements. I include it, though, because it is a condensed representation of some of the most important aspects of the past four years of my life. Her body’s story expresses the unavoidable reality of interconnectedness. Her headache was tied to the scar tissues (physical and emotional) lodged along her lumbar spine. Both needed to be released, received, and processed, in order for her to attain her highest degree of health. I couldn’t rely on rationalization or technique alone to support her in her process. I had to set my ego and arbitrary rules aside and simply be with her, present and bearing witness to her reality. My education prepared me to administer to her, and placed me in a position to offer support; our mutual humanity facilitated the healing.

During this past four and a half years, I’ve seen the same kind of dynamic play out, repeatedly. Contact, connection, and being received are as important as any technique; the physical, spiritual, and emotional bodies cannot be separated; strong emotions are like strong winds and need a place to vent; people will move as far as they are able at the pace that they can manage, and I must respect each person’s inherent right to direct the process – even subconsciously. None of this is new information. What happened for me, though, was an integration of these things that translated them from being ideas I believed to functional realities I could embody.

It took that integration to make me ready to explore the possibility of becoming a psychotherapist. My work as a massage therapist in that clinical setting, and concomitant work with the healing potential of flower essences provide me a focused point of view on whole-system healing. Four decades of involvement with questions of social justice and human/environmental stewardship bring me to the present place of understanding mental health as a sustainability issue. The themes converge, and it’s easy to see why now is the time that I am applying to study more formally. I needed the pieces to come together, to form a cohesive and flexible sculpture. It’s thrilling to imagine how the shape and configuration will change in response to this next phase of exploration.


Describe and discuss your core interests.

Joan Didion said: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” I think it goes beyond that. I suspect that we use personal narratives to process our experience, to inspire our growth, to sabotage our dreams, to give voice to our deepest caring, to lend perspective by way of humor, to manifest our fears and prejudices, to illuminate our altruistic tendencies, to soften our selfishness, to smooth over unresolvable rifts with persons or situations to which we no longer have functional access, to revise what has long been regarded in one light in a manner that makes present sense now that we’ve re-wired the room. I’m interested in the power of our autobiographic story-telling – individually and communally.

The posture of the physical therapy clinic where I worked was radical and I exploited the freedom to develop my own personal and professional framework. Not only did I welcome stories as integral contributions to a person’s physical context, I embraced them as roadmaps. Often, the client’s focus was on injuries and wounding experiences, on disappointments and fears, and that revealed one set of priorities and challenges. I listened and received this information with compassion. I also paid attention to evidence of places where the person was wise, strong, connected to her divinity. It seemed to me that the most empowering way to approach pain was to include as many of the client’s own gifts and abilities as possible, to enlist his sacredness as an ally and inner healer.

So many people came to the clinic feeling defeated and powerless, burdened by diagnoses that had mushroomed to become entire personal identities! It was alarming. I was dedicated to providing a mirror that showed a more complete portrait. All of the therapists in the clinic did that, each in her own particular style. Clients got better. Physicians said things like, “I don’t know what the hell they do over there. Sounds like voodoo. But people get better. Try it out.” We received it as high praise from professionals who have more material come through their in-boxes every week than anyone could ever hope to read, much less master.

I see this as a cultural phenomenon. We permit ourselves to be pushed around through an obstacle course fraught with mutually exclusive conditions: we must rest and we must meet our obligations; we must submit to our condition and we must not have it inconvenience anyone else; we must believe what we are told and not question the experts in charge of our care. Patients without a strong independent streak or external advocates can be swept away in a tidal wave of inadequate care scenarios that leave them significantly less healthy than they might be, otherwise.

Passion drives me to envision an empowering approach to mental health concerns. Yes, address what is acute and critical with whatever means best serve, and commit to supporting clients in discovering the myriad ways in which they are already healthy. Partner with clients to enlist that beautiful health as the most important ally. Doesn’t healing trust require an assumption that the trusted is working to support the highest good of the person risking the trust? Doesn’t this include fostering the highest degree of healthy independence possible, even while exploring the challenges and opportunities of sustaining (and sustainable) interdependence? I think it does.

Along with these ideas, it is central to my point of view that we require consciousness of ourselves as part of the natural world in order to be healthy. Nature isn’t a place to visit, it comprises our very cells. Whether or not I swim in it, the quality of the water in the lake near my home has a direct and constant effect on my health – physically, concretely, energetically, emotionally, and spiritually. Why else do we adorn our homes and bodies with natural objects, plants, animals and/or images of them? Why do we plant flowers and not just food? Why do we have pets and not just burden beasts? Why do we wear rocks and metal to symbolize commitment? Why do we dance, sing, sculpt, paint, cook, and make love? Because we are not separate from nature. Our sentience and self-awareness provide us an exquisite advantage: observation. We get to witness, as well as experience, the fact of being alive.

Ultimately, all of these considerations and interests boil down to the same few questions: What is the nature of love? How do our individual personalities and experiences promote and/or inhibit our ability and willingness to express and receive love? What does love mean at the level of community? How can I best use my life in service to love?



Discuss how you might explore your core interests through multiple or interdisciplinary areas of study. Consider areas including science, math, literature, creative writing, art, history, etc.

Part of why I chose Goddard is that the structure of learning is dynamic and provocative. I want to have my assumptions challenged, to discover where my ego is supplanting something useful with something that is merely gratifying, to consider ideas that don’t come from inside my own head. It seems to me that individualized learning strips away some of the hiding places built into more streamlined volume-based models. If what I want is to do is offer the best that I am able to offer, free of encumbering habits and limiting thoughts, then it follows that a personal crucible is the way to foster it.

That said, not having done this before, I can’t claim to know precisely what it will look like. In service to the process of becoming a more skilled support to processes of healing, I imagine that I will draw from the abundant libraries of knowledge and experience that precede me, in any form that suits a given line of inquiry. This might mean studying statistics, so that I can better understand the research done by others, and structure my own more effectively. It could mean spending time with someone who has spent a lifetime studying the medicinal properties of five plants. It could mean using creative arts as tools for reflection and revelation. It could mean studying the historical progress of thought with regard to human psychology and healing. It could mean learning about how to prepare formal case studies. It will mean, no doubt, learning how to write to APA guidelines. As someone who functions with a changed brain, it will also mean availing myself of tools, resources, and other appropriate supports.

In preparation, I’m structuring my life to support having this process of learning and the values inspiring at the center of it. My wife, a professor in the teacher education program at _____________ University, understands and supports my interests, whole-heartedly; they dovetail with her constructivist approach to teaching and her understanding of how humans best learn. I’m in the process of accepting a position at ___’s Center __________________________, as the administrative assistant to the Center’s director. The Center’s mission could not be better aligned with the kinds of questions foremost in my mind; anything that applies to the microcosm of an individual, applies in equal measure to the community in which he resides and interacts. I’m working with my doctor to set up a neuro-psych evaluation to create a current map of my brain and cognition, and then to construct a program of rehabilitation and skills-building in response to the information gleaned. (I’ve spoken some with ______ about support resources at Goddard, as well.)

It seems reasonable to assume that I’ll return to psychotherapy at some point during this learning process. Doing so would be consistent with my commitments to continue to clear my own healing channel, to address the things that will come up as a by-product of growth and change, and to stay connected to what it can mean to be engaged with someone else in the process of healing.

I expect that my continued work with flower essences will be part of the equation, as well. Working with the individual flowers to define their use as healing partners, testing the definitions, and deepening my consulting practice will augment my academic efforts and enhance my clinical skills. Managing and expanding the retail distribution of the essences, will further my understanding of the ethical and functional considerations of running a business.

In summary, my expectation is that all aspects of my life will work together to challenge, support, and inspire me throughout the learning process. I know that there will be surprises, moments of disappointment and triumph, and unexpected outcomes. In submitting this application, I embrace the possibilities with an open mind and heart. No matter what happens, it will only, always, and inevitably come down to love.

~Dot

Copyright 2008 Dot's Stuff. All rights reserved. Hey, it's my life. You really have to live it, to dig it.