What's the Purpose?
I think I'll start from the very beginning, a pretty good place to start...
To be honest I've never blogged before and it is definitely a new experience for me. So I hope to have your patience and grace while trying to put this stuff out there, and at the same time it's ok to laugh at my mistakes (Lord knows I make many). I was thinking long and hard this morning about what to make the first post about, and decided it might be a good idea to explain a little bit about the purpose of this blog, a little about myself, and even more importantly about the company we just started.
My wife and I have just started a counseling private practice, Mellow Mountain Counseling PLLC. We are scared to death about starting it, but we are pushing through the anxiety and stress of doing this because we feel that there is an important purpose which it can provide.
I want to share a little bit about what the purpose was in starting it.
So there are two professions that I am absolutely passionate about, social work and farming. And in order to explain Mellow Mountain Counseling it's important to understand both sides of this. I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who is currently practicing in Idaho as well as practicing in Utah. I love the work I do with counseling, I love being a part of the process of self discovery and connection, and I love working with some of the most amazing and resilient people I've ever met.
The thing that I struggle most with my career is the difficulties that many people have in being able to get mental health services. Often in order to get therapy services there are a lot of hoops which people have to jump through, it can be time consuming to make and keep appointments, and what can be most difficult is how costly it can be. And these in and of themselves can cause stress. Time after time I have seen how much my clients benefit from therapy, how it can be their weekly life saver to be able to have a safe place to process and sort out their thoughts and emotions. But their time in counseling can be limited due to the before mentioned barriers.
I wanted to start this business to try and eliminate some of these challenges. Our mission for Mellow Mountain Counseling is trying to have therapy be authentic, accessible, and affordable. There are multiple ways we are trying to do that and you can check it out more on our company website. Basically we're doing online therapy in the states of Idaho and Utah and looking to expand from there. But we feel it to be so important that people have reasonable access to ways of improving and maintaining their mental and emotional well being.
I had a family member ask me the other day, "Why the name Mellow Mountain?", and I figured this would be as good a place as any to explain that. The first reason is we currently live on a ranch that we've nicknamed mellow mountain because of the beautiful rolling hills and mountains which surround the area. The second reason has to do with my goal for the people I see in therapy which is to help them in finding peace and strength within their lives. The techniques, theories, and styles I use tend to be effective in this and so it seemed to be a good link with mellow representing the peace and mountain representing the strength. I don't know if that really made sense to anyone else, but it was a quick thought that made sense in my head.
So anyways we wanted to try and make it easier for anyone to come to therapy or at least have access to mental health tools and resources. But there is one group of people that we are trying to cater to especially, which is the rural communities and farmers and ranchers.
I personally grew up on a dairy farm in Utah and my wife grew up in a small town in Kentucky. We love the country and farming lifestyle, but as those who are familiar know, it can be a bitter sweet life. There are many amazing experiences and values that come with growing up this way, but the culture comes with it's own specific challenges.
Throughout my career I've worked in rural areas and with agricultural families, and it can be very difficult to access the appropriate resources needed to improve mental well being. Also through my work and personal experience I have been able to gain therapeutic insights which are relevant to the culture. These experiences have made it much easier for me to relate too and understand anyone who is currently lives in, or has a personal or family background in country living. It's important to be competent and open to the cultures you work with in order to understand the people and have a general idea of their specific needs. We want to work with and serve anyone we can, be it urban, suburban, or rural. And we also don't want to leave those who live in the outskirts; well, we don't want to leave them on the mental health outskirts. Our rural and agricultural communities are most important in bringing the basic resources people need to survive and this often gets forgotten about. We just want to say Mellow Mountain takes a special interest in supporting you and your families.
To wrap this up, the purpose of this is to provide information, insights, resources, and connection in helping anyone to find greater peace and strength. Thank you for stopping in and enduring this long post. I just want to say we are more than happy to help where we can; please contact us, visit our website, share your own thoughts and feelings. And we'll look forward to seeing y'all around.
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