Our Story
I opened the doors of Blue River Counseling & Wellness after, what has come to be, one of the best and worst years of my life. In 2023, both myself and my family were struggling. As a family, we had experienced multiple pregnancy losses and secondary infertility. My husband and I were working in social service roles that were underpaid and often unappreciated, if not by those we served, then by those who employed us. I constantly feared for my young daughter, for whom I wanted a stellar public education, physical safety in school, and access to a quality of life that I often felt I could not provide. It was in this chaos and uncertainty that my family took a leap of faith and moved to Shelbyville, Indiana. And so a new story began to be woven together from the fragments of our old lives.
While Shelbyville is imperfect, this land, these people, and this way of life have become the second chance I didn’t know I needed. Amidst the chaos of a cross-country move and the grief of a life left behind, there has also been the beauty in the birth of our miracle baby, the newfound sense of calling and purposes for both my husband and I in our vocational work, and the calm confidence that our children are safe and well cared for by their community. The Blue River and its surrounding region represent the paradox of how something wild, chaotic, and literally a force of nature, can also be the raw beginning of the people we were always meant to be. Like the Hoosiers in our history, we can begin to build a life, piece by piece, that we are proud of. Our resilience, our perseverance, and our faith in ourselves and our own ability to be transformed can withstand anything— even the unpredictability of life.
One of my favorite poems is by Parker Palmer, called “November 22”, which describes his personal and our collective process of healing after the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In his poem, he writes…
… the world unravels always,
and it must be rewoven time and time again.
You must keep collecting threads—threads of meaning,
threads of hope, threads of purpose, energy and will—
along with all the knowledge, skill that every weaver needs.
You must keep on weaving—stopping sometimes only
to repair your broken loom—weave a cloak of warmth
and light against the dark and cold, a cloak in which
to wrap whoever comes to you in need—the world
with all its suffering, those near at hand, yourself."
I opened Blue River Counseling & Wellness with the explicit mission to be weavers and thread-bearers to those who are attempting to re-weave their lives. And I can do that with confidence, knowing that I have also had to re-weave mine.
Blue River Counseling is a community of clinicians and clients who believe that no matter how tattered their cloak is, threads of meaning, hope, and purpose exist. And that the only way forward is to begin doing the work together. Founded on the values of embracing abundance, radical authenticity, movement towards restorative living, and creative innovation, we hope that Blue River Counseling is to you, what the Blue River has become to us: a place of new beginnings.