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Standing on the clifftop, looking out to the horizon, I asked myself how far I had travelled, where I had come from, and what I intended to do with the rest of my days? My three score years had arrived, and I felt the overwhelming sense of an ending, and the need to do something new, but first I had to analyse what was taking place in me.

In my 15 years as an integrative therapist, self-critique and self-analysis have been key features of my personal development as a woman, first and foremost, but they have also carried great importance for me as a therapist.

My cultural and historical past says that I should not criticise others or give feedback, not because it should not be given, but because it was often met with a punitive response (compliments of my mother). Therefore, I shy away; I recoil, often to my own detriment. Ìý

Before and during my years as a therapist I have taught. I taught adults in community education, helping them to learn English, pass exams and go out into our cosmopolitan society with confidence and vigour. When I qualified as a psychotherapist I found myself teaching in a different way – I taught ‘me’, I taught about ‘me’ and what it meant to be a meaningful ‘me’. I extracted, sometimes with great difficulty, the first-person pronoun from my students, and helped them to discover who they were, are and what they wanted to become. It was an exhilarating time for both me and my students, and we learned a great deal from each other, about each other, and to take away to others.

In that time I learned the value of code shifting. As a black woman and very often the only black person in my professional role as a tutor, counselling manager and counsellor, I moved in and out of the wave of communication and interaction with my students, peers, colleagues and clients. I found that as the years rolled on, I became increasingly tired. I recognised the effort and exhaustion that prevailed to stay on top, always giving, my mind, my thoughts, my best, my energy. It became apparent that, unlike the guidance I gave to my clients, I was taking little emotional and mental care of me.

I began volunteering in a men’s prison and found myself pulled into a new world. For some strange reason I was completely accepted, and there it did not matter to the men that I was a woman, or black – they saw someone who was willing to help them, who had sacrificed her time, and was comfortable to guide them, albeit gently assertive at times.

‘You’re young, you don’t want to spend your time in and out of prison for the rest of your days, do you?’ ‘No, miss’

‘No, miss’ – I felt like a schoolma’am, but I loved it, and I still love the feeling of belonging, usefulness, fitting in and my giving being received and acknowledged.

So between navigating my cultural community, my peer community and the prison, I found myself thinking about where I wanted to be, and who I wanted to be with. I began to feel greatly unsupported in some areas while at odds in others. I experienced the subtle yet oppressive push of cultural dogma, and the inherent racist undertones that I was always aware of, and I didn’t like it. It evoked a push within me to seek help, to find someone somewhere who could understand this change that was taking place that I could not manage or comprehend fully, and so I reached out to a therapist. Therapists need therapists.

It was good to talk, I used the session to offload, and we navigated our way through decades of unshared experiences, painful and telling experiences, secret experiences.

I will continue to give, share, teach, tell, help and guide, because that is who I am. I may be silent when I should speak or speak when I should be silent. I may internalise my thoughts or put them out there for someone else to analyse, or take myself away to my reflective place on the cliff edge when I need to stop. I will just continue to live, simply, and make for my life what it is to be alive.