Alder Grove Counseling Collaborative is focused on being a place of healing for all people despite the differences that may divide us. We are living in a complicated time full of complicated issues, concerns, choices, and fears. While everyone has their own thoughts and feelings about this, we strongly believe in the importance of recognizing the differences in everyone’s lived experience. These differences are vast and often feel unbreachable. They keep us apart and we believe they can also bring us together.
In order to do that, we must openly acknowledge the harm done to so many based on factors they cannot control. Factors such as what they look like, who they are, who they love, where they’re from, what language they speak, what faith they practice, and how they move around in the world. History is full of horror stories and we do no favors to anyone by pretending history isn’t what it was, or rewriting it in order to feel better about who we are.
The only way we can truly move forward and heal ourselves and our communities is to acknowledge these unkind facts of history and make a choice to do better. We understand the value in differences and we see how they can make us stronger.
When we recognize that we can never really be culturally competent, as our profession once claimed, we are free to instead strive to become more aware, more informed, more humble in the way we approach others and the world. This is never a destination that we reach, but always a place that we’re moving towards. This journey can help to build a bridge, uniting us in our differences rather than dividing us, which only makes us stronger. We are committed to doing that as individuals and as a practice and we can only hope that our efforts will also help you.
