It is the year 2020. Somehow this seems to be a big date. When I was a child, this was the kind of date that would have created visions of flying cars and energy beams transporting people from a spaceship to a planet in no time. Now it is 2020, and we have self-driving cars of which many of us are afraid; and I at least wish there were transportation beams so that I could zip over to Germany without controls that make me feel like a criminal and endless hours spent in a flying metal tube that pollutes the clean air that I so appreciate.
So 2020 may not quite be living up to the dreams of the girl I was. But in August of this year I will celebrating a number of anniversaries that would have seemed similarly fantastic to the little girl who grew up in West-Berlin.
On August 19th, 1997 my Canadian husband and I moved from my native Berlin to Ontario. When I arrived I spoke English well enough, having learned some in school, having lived in England for a year, and having been married to an English speaker for almost five years. I felt that I knew the differences between our cultures well enough to feel comfortable in my husband’s home country – and I realized quickly that I had no idea about just how big and how culturally different this country was. My husband was born and raised in Saskatchewan but we moved to Ontario – and that, it turns out, was almost like a different country for him, too. It was a learning curve for me, living in Canada. The spaces and distances here are enormous compared to Germany. People here were friendly and polite, not something that is a given in all parts of my home town. There was a diversity of people here that I would never have dreamt of in Berlin. But maybe most of all, I was impressed by the kindness of strangers, the laid back attitude to life, and the general acceptance I found when I floundered my way through language and cultural difficulties in those early years.
Twenty-three years later, Canada has become home. As an adult I have spent more time here than in Berlin. The city of my birth has changed, some parts of it beyond my recognition, and going back home to Berlin feels strange now. I find myself breathing out when I get back home to Cookstown. I think and count and dream in English now; and sometimes I stop and I wonder how I got here. Nothing in my early years had prepared me for this life. I had a love for the English language, yes, but I had never in my wildest dreams thought I would leave Berlin, let alone Germany or Europe. Canada had been a fabled place not so dissimilar to Vulcan – well, at least as far as distance was concerned. To this day the number of coincidences that had to happen for me to meet my husband and then for us to end up here at the time we did, are mind-boggling. And so I can’t help to think that maybe there was more at play than coincidence.
On August 4th, 2000 I graduated from the training program in Spiritual Psychotherapy at the Transformational Arts College in Toronto, the result of more coincidences. After arriving in Canada I was looking for something meaningful to do. I came from a solid background in administration, but I had little real love for that work. As a child I had wanted to be a teacher but for a variety of reasons that had not manifested. And so, when I found the training program at TAC I was intrigued and hopeful. We had very little money at the time and the cost of this program seemed immense. But we figured I would – hopefully – earn it back at some point and we made it work. After two years of training while also working full-time I spent the whole summer getting the last of my case studies and other requirements done so I could graduate before September – because I had been offered a teaching position at TAC in the Total Self program (personal development courses for the general public). I was thrilled and intimidated and overwhelmed and scared all at once. I remember a few moments in those first weeks of teaching and providing therapy when my mind went completely blank. That is when I learned to really trust in my spiritual and inner guidance – because somehow I got through.
I had to trust in this guidance a lot over the years. There were many ups and downs, personal and professional, and there were times when I thought I had to give it all up and go back to administration. Over time I learned that this comes with being self-employed, especially in a field that depends still largely on people being willing to take care of themselves. I was lucky to meet many wonderful and supportive people, starting with my colleagues at TAC, to some amazing and very skilled supervisors and practitioners of our work, and to some great colleagues and companions along the way.
This year marks my twentieth year of being in private practice as a psychotherapist. I have worked with hundreds of people individually, I have taught in the Spiritual Psychotherapy training program of which I was a graduate, I taught – and designed – personal development course and professional development workshops, and I have been working as a supervisor to psychotherapists and counsellors for fifteen of those twenty years. As a little girl I had been dreaming of being a teacher; I never had imagined that teaching can happen in this way, too: deeply personal in its design for each individual client and supervisee, and deeply meaningful to all those who choose, freely, to be in a learning environment. Twenty years in I am still humbled by it all; and I am still, in some ways more than ever, inspired to find ways to help others grow and to continue growing myself.
On August 7th, 2015 my husband and I fulfilled a long-held dream: we moved into our first own home. Better late than never, they say – and they are right. Although the day itself was marred – we also learned that same day that our 18-year old cat Max was terminally ill – the move to Cookstown has proven to be a wonderful decision. We love our home and the relative quiet of this more country-like setting. More than that, though, this house has provided me with the opportunity to change the way I work. My office space here is more private, bigger, more suitable to psychotherapy works than the space I had in our previous home in Richmond Hill. We have a large room – we named it the learning room – that provides ample space for groups and workshops, and I have a dear friend and colleague in nearby Alliston who is generously giving me the use of her even larger space when I need it. The location for both these spaces is quite central, allowing me to offer services to people for whom Toronto or even Richmond Hill were too far. And now, five years later, it is partially due to this house that another chapter in my work is opening up.
Over the years I have had several requests for internship placements, and I always had to say no to them, mainly due to space considerations. Last year, having the space to try it out, I agreed to do one such placement. Karen Guitman began her time with me as an intern and ended it as a friend and colleague; and now that she is building her private practice, a new partnership is arising. Karen spends two days a week in the Cookstown office while I spend those two days working online, doing administrative work and online sessions. It’s early days and Karen isn’t as busy as she would like to be – and deserves to be – but it feels good to move into more of a cooperative practice model. I have changed my website name from Sabine Cox, RP to Sabine Cox Psychotherapy, and I have adjusted the content of the website’s pages to reflect that it isn’t only me anymore. I may make further changes to the website soon.
With Karen being part of the Cookstown practice, I also feel more at ease with my growing focus on professional development for other psychotherapists and for counsellors. Karen has availability to take on new client work which allows me to spend more of my time on the professional development side of my practice, a part of the work that is very dear to my heart. I was very lucky to have a good start into this profession. Now, with so many changes in the field of psychotherapy in Ontario, the hurdles can seem unsurmountable to someone newly stepping into private practice. But today maybe more than ever, good psychotherapists are really needed; and so it is my hope that I can be of some support to those new therapists as they are growing into their own in their new profession. Although the internship experience with Karen has shown that my practice still is too small to provide a good and stress free internship setting – we made it work but it was difficult – there are so many other ways in which I can provide this support: clinical supervision, supervision groups, consultations and business set-up support, professional development courses and continuing education workshops. I am excited about the opportunities.
There are other things, too, that are being thought about, planned, considered for the near future now that Karen is in the picture. A new set of courses and workshops is part of this planning; maybe a whole new way of organizing the work and even including others. And who knows, maybe August 2020 would be the right time for starting anything new like this. So far, August starts have lead to good results for me – results that have so far defied the limited dreams and hopes of a little girl from West-Berlin.
