Thank you to Lisa-Michelle Kucharz–founder of The40Factor.com, for a great Soapbox interview about challenges faced by 40-somethings. Here’s a taste from the article, Somewhere Over The 40-Something Rainbow…

“In your 40s, you have a special something,” proclaimed Miller. “You’re experienced enough to know what truth feels like, and you’re young enough to believe in the magic of it. You pretty much have the upper hand — if you so choose to use it.”

…CHECK OUT THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE!

The thing about “The Soapbox Therapist” becoming the new show on Oprah’s new OWN Cable network is that YOU CAN HELP MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Soapbox Therapy blog/column has been reaching out, inspiring, supporting, and loving you and your gorgeous selves for almost 1 year! (anniversary is 7/8/10!) Now the opportunity has arrived to reach out to even more amazing human beings and help support them on their journey to self-discovery, self-respect, and self-esteem…one television episode at a time!!!!! YES, that’s right… Soapbox has TV on the brain!

Here’s the deal: Oprah is launching a new TV network called OWN, and this competition is to get MY OWN SHOW on the network!!!!! The show? “The Soapbox Therapist”!!

All you have to do is click on the link below, watch my video, and VOTE! You can vote AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT!!!!!!!!!!!! YES, AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT!!!!! The people/videos with the top 5 votes will automatically be invited into the next round, an in-person interview and audition in Los Angeles in July, so we need votes, numbers, and positive comments FAST!!!!!

So, over the next 5 weeks leading up to the Soapbox Therapy blog 1 year anniversary, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE VOTE your beautiful fingers off and let’s celebrate loving ourselves from the inside out and the outside in and every ounce in-between!!!!!

Thank you for believing in me as I believe in you, you gorgeous fabulous self-aware emotionally intelligent Soapbox readers, you!!! Let’s take “The Soapbox Therapist” to OWN!!!

CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR “THE SOAPBOX THERAPIST”

love love love love love,

I was flattered a few weeks ago when, after stumbling upon Soapbox Therapy, SFCAMFT (The San Francisco Chapter of The California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists) asked me to contribute to their Spring 2010 newsletter.

I decided to write about those who have taught me the most as a therapist-and a person for that matter…teenagers.

Published in the San Francisco Chapter Newsletter for The California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (March, 2010)

As I total my earned hours for 2009 and shift to the new rules and new paperwork of 2010, I find myself watching my student self persistently shed, and my clinician self continue to expand and settle in, simultaneously.

While shifting and rolling around in the open space between two professional identities, I feel a deep sense of gratitude towards my teenage clients. Not because they’re the reason I’m moving forward on my hours, though that’s true, but because they remind me every hour, every day, every week…what it takes to be in the “in-between.”

It’s not easy, this place right here between there and there. This groundless, ambiguous place with boundaries on both sides asking you, telling you, to stay put. This place that asks you to behave like those in the next stage, but follow rules from the stage before. This place that asks you to be neither and both, at the same time.

The thing about the in-between is that it’s not for those with a weak stomach, nor a tendency towards motion sickness. It’s not for those who only feel safe on the ground. It’s for those willing to embrace some air time, some floating, some gliding. The in-between doesn’t bond well with people who need, want, and crave a specific label or definition to describe their identity. The in-between, in fact, is only kind to those willing to breathe, close their eyes, and go with it.

Teenagers show me each day, what it looks like to encounter the in-between head on. That place of kind-of being one thing and kind-of being another thing, simultaneously.

They remind me with their comments and their behaviors and their confusions and their all-of-the-above-and-then-some that being lodged in the tiny, invisible, undefined space between one seemingly solid label and another is, while uncomfortable and shocking, the chapter in life that prepares us for everything.

Practicing the in-between prepares us for every shift, every change, every transition, every new job-new relationship-new house, every end of things, every death of things, every I-don’t-know and I’m-not-sure and can-you-just-give-me-a minute-to-decide? Teenagers show me, teach me, remind me that the in-between is really where it’s at.

I love working with teenagers because of the in-between in which they reside, not in spite of it. The space they dwell in gives adolescents a raw and amazing ability to smell a lack of authenticity from a mile away. I love witnessing their truth and their mistakes and the necessary details they fill their days with, helping to distract them from, well, all of it. I love witnessing them try this on and that on, with no apologies.

By inviting teenagers into my office and my life, I am gifted the opportunity to journey with them–not pulling them towards adulthood or pushing them back to childhood, but being right here, in the space that matters most. It is the space that appears and pops up and imposes itself into our lives, our adult lives, more than any other space, or chapter, or time: the in-between.

Teenagers, both those that sit across from me each day and the one that sits within me, have taught me more about transition and patience and loosening my grip than any graduate school class or training I could ever attend. I sit joyfully with the discomfort that is adolescence and am reminded: arriving is not only overrated, but rare. But shifting, changing, growing-the in-between…now that’s where it’s at.