About Me
I am passionate about play, and about children and families enjoying life together.
I am a social worker with 22 years’ experience. I completed my undergrad degree at what was then called UND (now UKZN, Durban). I have a Social Work Master’s degree in Play Therapy from the University of Pretoria. For more on what play therapy is you can read here.
I love to see children and adults find out more about who they are and the worth they add to the world around them. I truly believe there is always Fresh Hope. I believe there is new hope every day for change and growth.
I love being outdoors, swimming, walking, gardening and I am a complete bookworm. I love a good movie and I love popcorn enough to blog about it at times. I journal regularly and am not averse to spending a day alone to recharge.
I have two children, one a teenager and one an almost-teenager and a fabulous husband.
My Values
I've been thinking about what my values are for some time and about the importance of communicating them as the foundation from which I live and work. Even if no one ever reads these; here they are, and this is me, right now.
Community
Family, small groups, neighbourhoods and friends all make community for me. I value a space where I need to live for someone other than myself. Sometimes it involves sacrifice, sometimes it is uncomfortable. But community living is the anti-dote to self-absorption and isolation in today's world. And also, I adore my family. Full stop.
Connection
I deeply love and appreciate people. I enjoying making and fostering connections. I want to be a catalyst to connection in parent-child relationships where that connection has been lost or is temporarily “offline”. When we work on our connections with others, we are giving and receiving messages of love, significance and belonging. Play is the way children experience connection and so I love to continually promote play!
Wholeness
I intentionally work on my own wholeness as a lifestyle; through journalling, my spiritual journey and my relationships and the communities of which I'm part.
Wholeness is not the same as perfection, I'll be a work in progress until the day I die! I work from a systemic perspective. Human beings are emotional, physical, spiritual, biological and psychological beings.
I believe I have a particular part to play in the spiritual and emotional well-being of children and families. I long to see families thrive in wholeness, and I believe wholeness is possible.
Faith
My faith in Jesus is central to who I am and the driving force behind the decisions I make. My faith enables me to believe in fresh hope everyday.
Warmth
Warmth communicates acceptance and welcome. I value inclusion, everyone is welcome, everyone is important. Communicating with warmth creates the conditions of safety needed for connection to grow and deepen.
Authenticity
Sharing from a real, honest and lived perspective is important to me. As a parent I appreciate real and raw, not polished and perfect. I am pretty much "what you see is what you get." Except that I am also a private person and that's real about me too!
The Outdoors
I don't know where I would be without access to nature. It is incredibly important and valuable to me. The balance to everything else going on in my life, a retreat. I don't know if "the outdoors" is a value! But it's so important to me I put it here anyway.