Elizabeth has enjoyed her journey since graduating from Meridian, describing it as successful, rewarding, and aligned with what she feels she is meant to do. She has been in private practice since 2011.Prior to Meridian, she already had a master’s in psychology and was working towards completing her internship for an LMFT license.Because Elizabeth had a history as a performing artist with a degree in theater for 20 years, she felt Meridian’s participatory nature and focus on self-expression and ritual aligned with what she felt was healing for her and how she wanted to work with others. After finishing her master's programs and working at a rehab clinic for methamphetamine addicts trying to keep their kids from being taken by the state, she entered Meridian’s PhD program.Elizabeth had worked in the legal system with many domestic violence, parenting, and addiction issues. She did not expect to do so much work in domestic violence but ended up publishing her dissertation on the subject.While in court testifying on behalf of clients, Elizabeth drew on Meridian’s practices and the ritualization she learned.
”I felt like with my education helped ground me in a set of practices and philosophy that helped me stay in alignment while working in a very contentious space…I even ended up supervising the whole mental health department and would lead them through the rituals that we did at Meridian. It helped ground all of us and keep us sane. In fact, there was so much going on like a lot of trauma, and I was able to keep myself, my clients, and also my colleagues in a space that felt held and nurtured and protected based on what I learned at Meridian. I would not have been able to do that if I hadn’t had Meridian’s help with that.”
“I felt like Meridian gave me a set of tools that is unique in the marketplace, and also gave me the ability to work with my own stuff that comes up in session as it does in ways that has been transformative not only for me, but for my clients.”
“I feel like Meridian gave me a lot of internal resources to work with a big diversity of clients.”
In her classes, students performed expressive work and were given opportunities to learn about interpersonal neurobiology and how the autonomic nervous system works. As she puts this into language for her clients so they can understand why they are doing some of these things, they are convinced and find themselves doing transformative work.She says her training helped her understand transformative work in such a way that she can give that experience to others.Since Oregon legalized Psilocybin facilitation, Elizabeth is also taking a class to become a licensed Psilocybin facilitator in addition to doing therapy.“Magic mushrooms and the psychedelic industry is a really burgeoning industry right now and I am very much in alignment with Indigenous perspectives on plant medicine, so I’m looking to add that to the box of tools that I have to offer to my clients. I’m also in the process of founding the Oregon Psilocybin Industry Association, which is a web of professionals from the industry, and organizing a conference for them.”
Elizabeth is working to keep the administration of plant medicine in a therapeutic context in alignment with Indigenous practices. She feels that Meridian set her up well for that because she did a lot of ritualization in therapeutic work, in class at Meridian, and ritual is part of the Indigenous way of practicing. There are preparatory sessions for people prior to administering the medicine, which is delivered in ritual form. Following that, there are integration sessions, where you can process what occured after the medicine was administered. As the state moves toward having legally licensed sites, she will be using ritual in those contexts with people as they take the plant medicine.Although Native American culture is close to her heart, her genetic lineage is heavily based in the North British Isles, so she resonates with the Druid culture and religion. Even though there was no written documentation, many anthropologists and medical anthropologists believe they used plant medicine as well.“I’m leaning towards bringing Druid practices into my work because that is an alignment with my own lineage. I also want to give homage to all of the other iIndigenous cultures that have kept that alive.”
”What I can say is that partially through what I learned at Meridian and partially through the work [my son] has done, he has gone from multiple hospitalizations throughout the year from the age of 10 to 20, so many scary suicide attempts, and never having a writing class to now getting his PhD at Oxford. That’s the kind of work that’s possible when we apply the kind of work that I learned at Meridian. He will be writing his story, and we plan to do a lot of work together in that space about supporting families with bipolar.”
“It gave me a different way to look at things. I would say that [the mental health field] is a wonderful way to help others while also growing and expanding your own internal life, and it can be a very, very rewarding career. It can be very financially secure. I felt very blessed in that way in this career. The difference with Meridian is they force you to go into the places that therapists need to go in order to be good therapists. Many programs don't do that. So in Meridian, not only are you going to learn how to help others, you are going to help grow yourself in a way that makes you the vehicle for that help.”
