Insight By Jael

  PC:COUNTRY CLUB CHRISTIAN CHURCH   I am not a catholic, but Ash Wednesday interests me a lot. Arsh Wednesday, to my understanding, is a reminder of human impermanence. The guiding verse is  "Genesis 3:19 for you are dust and dust you shall return." This blog post is inspired by a book I am currently reading titled  Bitter-Sweet by Susan Cain .  It's an amazing book that talks about how sorrow and longing make us whole. In the book, Susan Cain dedicates an entire chapter to mortality, grief, and impermanence; her words are so well put and very informative. What I find fascinating about Catholicism(is this an actual word?) is how rich it is in tradition. It is a faith filled with rituals, systems, celebrations, and structured practices that seem to hold people through every season of life. A few weeks ago, I came across a TikTok video explaining how some Catholic communities have groups of sisters who stay awake at midnight praying specifically for mothers with ...

This January was quite special for me. I had set out to just live life and not to focus too much on goals that always end up not being fulfilled. Maybe the goal is to let things just unfold(I don't know)  My highlight of the month was def reading one book each week and I loved the books that i randomly chose of course with the help of ChatGPT(what could I do without AI?) The books are amazing, I loved the stories and the lessons in it. I love the growth that came with reading them and I just love me for being such a consistent girlie. Is reading a hobby? These are the four books that shaped my January and the lessons they left behind. 1. Tuesdays with Morrie  : Learning How to Sit With Mortality This book felt like being invited into a very gentle classroom. Morrie doesn’t teach through theory or advice. He teaches through presence, through honesty about dying, loving, forgiving, and letting go. What stayed with me most was how calmly he speaks about death, not as somethi...

  Grief — I have come to accept that it is one of the most painful and complicated experiences anyone can face. The feeling of losing someone to death is unexplainable and extremely heartbreaking. For a couple of years now, I have worked alongside loss and grief clients in therapy and offered first aid and emotional support to the bereaved during burials. Most families hire first aiders to help relatives and the congregation in the morgue while viewing the body, when they read the eulogy, and when their loved one is being buried. This is the work I have been doing for a while now. Because of these experiences, I have come to appreciate life more and to be more gracious and empathetic toward anyone who is grieving. It doesn’t matter what relationship you had with the person or how close you were — grief is grief, and there is nothing more painful than knowing they are never coming back. We will never hear them talk, walk, work, breathe, or even open their eyes again. Grief is a pain...

I think there comes a time when you stop blaming unemployment and start examining your own contribution to being unemployed. It has now been almost two years since I graduated, and I haven't been lucky enough to get a psychology-related job. But I am not the problem. The counseling psychology job market is very small for various reasons, mainly because our country is yet to take mental health seriously. There are no jobs because therapy is still seen as a luxury, and therapy is not cheap. Ideally, we should have counselors in every school, hospital, and corporate organization, but we are not there yet. The last time I checked, one psychiatrist serves at least three hospitals, and the only hospitals that have their own counselors and psychiatrists are level 4 hospitals and above. When this year started, I swore to work on building myself as a brand and to start sourcing personal clients. By March, I had identified a niche and had already started building my online presence, marke...

  Three years ago, I wrote a blog titled  Where's my voice . This was back in 2021, I was so passionate about knowing what my purpose in life was and what my voice was.  Three years later, I am not a hundred percent sure about what my purpose is, but I am not where I was back then. I have a rough idea of what my voice is and where my purpose in life is. In the beginning I had a plan that was going to help me figure out this big question and I even wrote on the blog; I can publicly admit without shame that I have done all the hard work. I have joined communities, and I have been part of different organizations. By doing so, I have over the years discovered my strengths and my weaknesses. I know that I can be a good leader but I need to work on my leadership skills. I know that I can lead projects and organize events. I know I can mobilise people for an event, I can create a safe space for people, I can be a fun moderator, a good host and I can be a good public speaker. I n...

I will never forget the night my mother said this to me... " Jael, I've noticed you've been quite of late. What's wrong?" Not her exact words but something similar and in Kalenjin(my native language).   Growing up, my mother always had us all in the living room after taking our supper for a short bible reading session and a prayer, these were the times she would do some sort of house keeping by addressing different issues in the family.  She still does that till date. I used to hate them a lot but I now see what it did to us as a family.   So, a few days before that, I cannot exactly remember what happened but I was mad at my parents for something they did, or something they did not do. I ended up going to our farm down hill where we have a borehole and contemplated jumping in but I some how went for the tall grass around. I burried my face in the grass, tightly grasped a bunch of it with my hands and let out I silent scream. I let go of the grass seconds...