I just got back from my first counselling session at Planned Parenthood Toronto (PPT). So far so good, I’m very excited! I’ll be going biweekly for a year.

The first session is always that rehash that I’m sure many of you are familiar with. You break out into the same story you’ve told all professionals before. Your family, you childhood, your suicide attempts, your coping, traumas blah blah blah. That’s what we did and as usual I do it with a smile because years of retelling this stuff has made me not care about it.

My social worker, J, is very into art therapy so her and I should get a long great! She told me that she’s getting the equipment for sandplay therapy (sandplaycanada.ca) so we could try that in the summer! J also does colleges, which I love, so we are going to do some of that too! I’ve never done something hands on like this in counselling so I’m up for the experience!

At my request she’s also giving me a referral to the psychiatrist that comes to PPT once a month so I can possibly get in there during the summer and find out if I’ve changed enough to be deemed mentally healthy, if I’m something else, or if I’m the same. I guess regardless I’m going to carry on as I always do!

We ended with my counselling goals:

• Make the angry moments in my life less intense
• Stop cutting completely and develop more positive coping strategies

I’m hoping that this time around will be my best effort into counselling yet!

I graduate with a 4 year Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) almost a year ago from Ryerson University. I applied for my Masters of Social Work (MSW) at Ryerson University and York University but did not get in due to a perceived lack of experience.

I've been working since finishing school and it's be great. The problem I'm running into is the jobs that I want I need something I don't have and that is a degree related to working with children such as Child & Youth Care (CYC) or Early Childhood Education (ECE). I was venting about this issue to Michael because I love working with children but the current jobs that I can apply for are not long term. I may have experience with children but the fancy degree is what people want these days. Michael suggested that I go for a masters related to ECE. I said that it probably didn't exist because ECE is generally a college level program and it was very strange of Ryerson to offer ECE at the undergraduate level. I WAS WRONG!!!!

Ryerson has a Masters of Fine Arts, Early Childhood Studies! Reading the description is sounds great (http://www.ryerson.ca/ece/graduate/index.html) I just hope I can pay for all of this.

I already have an idea for a Major Paper: how parents with mental health issues raise children. I would want to look at the issues these parents face, issues faced by children, supports available, stereotypes of mentally ill parents, effects of stigma on children, fears of to-be parents with mental health  issues, being a mentally ill parent(s) and raising a child with mental health issues etc I can link my own lived experience and combine two things that I like, mental health and kids!

The big question is....HOW DO I PAY FOR THIS!?!?!?!?