Bonnie Healey LCSW

09/26/2025

09/23/2025

09/18/2025

Gaps in resumes are - in my opinion - becoming more and more understandable and acceptable. And speaking as an employer, I don’t see anything wrong with a gap - and I also don’t think it’s really my business WHY there’s a gap in someone’s resume. But let’s consider why there are gaps in resumes sometimes:

1. You were burned out from a job, took time out for self-care and maybe to plan a pivot in your career. What I hear as an employer is that you are proactive in managing your stress and in deciding how to reduce your stress in the future.

2. You were a stay at home parent or you were a caregiver for a loved one. What I hear as an employer is that you value your family and you take care of those you are responsible for.

3. You had a gap year during, before or after college. What I hear as an employer is that you are pacing yourself as you grow, and you are collecting experiences that lead to further personal growth.

4. You weren’t sure what you wanted to do. What I hear as an employer is that you chose to take the time to find a job that was right for you.

5. You couldn’t find a job despite your best efforts. What I hear as an employer is that you tried to find a job, you didn’t give up - and you’re still not giving up if you’re sitting in front of me asking for a job.

I’m telling you, the people who have gaps in their resumes can turn out to be the people you most want to hire. The reasons why we have gaps and what we are doing during those gaps can say so much about your character than you realize. So I’m not worried about the gap in your resume - not at all!

09/16/2025

Have you ever gotten stuck on the person who hurt you not apologizing? Not apologizing *ever* ? If so, you’re human. If people hurt you, they’re supposed to apologize, and if they don’t, you might feel some discord. What should have happened didn’t happen, and some part of you might see that and get stuck on waiting for them to apologize or make amends.

People don’t always apologize or make amends for a number of reasons though – and you’re not always going to know why. There may be times where an apology or amends from that person could actually do more harm than good, it all depends on your situation. Sometimes the lack of an apology or amends is a thing you just have to accept and move on from.

It helps to keep redirecting yourself back to the purpose of your own journey.

🌺What are you trying to heal from?
🌺Why are you trying to heal from the things that hurt you?
🌺How will your own healing right now benefit a future version of yourself and those who come into your life?

I think it’s normal to occasionally feel the hurt, shame, anger, and so on that can come from apologies that were never given to you. Accept those feelings, but then move right into the questions that bring you back to your own journey. Your own journey is a thing that you can have control over, you can make your journey as purposeful and healing as you want it to be. Whatever that person does or doesn’t do to be a better person – that’s completely on them. That’s their journey, not yours – if they aren’t maturing and growing along their journey or if they aren’t fixing the things that they’ve broken on their journey, there’s nothing you can do about it. They’re going to go the way that they go in their own life. There’s peace in accepting this, and joy in focusing on your own growth and healing instead.

09/08/2025

Su***de is heartbreaking, speaking as a surviving family member - I know this personally. That said, I give so much grace to those who struggle with suicidal ideation and to those who lost themselves to it. Depression is such a hard thing to see your way out of.

My experience is that people need someone to listen even more than they need someone to understand. And we can ALL be someone who listens. That’s what I’d ask all of us to do this month, truly listen to one another, offer to listen, make sure the people in your life feel safe sharing with you.

And to anyone who’s suffering, yes - call the hotlines, go to the ER as needed - but please know I’ll listen. Even if I don’t know you, if I don’t take your insurance, if I can’t take you on as a client for any reason - I’ll at least listen, help you find support and make sure you don’t have to go through it alone.

***deAwareness

09/06/2025

Part 2 of how much I love my friends back home. Thank you everyone for supporting me and the Army Behavioral Health clinic at PSAB (Saudi Arabia)! I’m so thrilled to be putting together a brand-new clinic tent out here and expanding services soon. In October, I’m going to hit the ground running with some of the ideas I have. There truly is nowhere else I’d rather be than right here, right now. I feel like I’m the Behavioral Health Officer / OIC that I really want to be, and it feels wonderful. Thanks again for the support!!

09/03/2025

The Army Behavioral Health team at PSAB loves my friend Kate!!!! Thank you so much for seeing what we need and supporting us! The portable filing cabinets lock so now my patient files can all be stored safely and with privacy compliance. She gave me what I want most - the ability to do my job the way it should be done 💜

And thank you to everyone else who sent things, I am getting to everyone as quick as I can. I have been working hard here during the day, working for HMC at night, running at like 10-11pm and doing documentation “whenever” - I feel guilty for not showing appreciation as much as I want to right away - I’m getting there though. I’m just working all the time here though and loving every second of it. I truly do have the best friends in the world. 💜

08/31/2025

In a time period when we’re all talking about letting go, holding boundaries, walking away, etc…are we remembering to talk about forgiveness? Are we remembering that as we close the door on disrespect, we also need to open doors with love and openness?

I’ve had my own challenges with this too, I think we all have. Knowing our worth is awesome and amazing, and it naturally leads to knowing what we don’t deserve and putting negativity out of our lives. This is a good thing! But it can’t be where we stop; we also need to add in openness to what is good so we can let in the good things that make us better. And good does not always mean “new” - sometimes good means “healed”.

When you’re truly and completely open to what is good, you have to admit that sometimes people learn from mistakes. Sometimes you put them out of your life, they realize what they’ve lost, they do the work to be better and they come back to you asking for a second chance. What do you do then? Well, I guess that depends on what went wrong in the first place and where you’re at now. You have options other than saying “no”, though:

🌿 Forgive, let it go and move on
🍀 Forgive, be on good terms
🌱 Forgive, let them back in
☘️ Forgive, have an even better relationship than before

Recognize healing for the miracle it is and appreciate it. I’ve been there, I know that while forgiveness can be so hard, it feels so good once you fully embrace it. I mean for you, it feels so good for YOU to forgive someone. It’s like the weight of the pain they caused is taken off your shoulders and you don’t have to carry it anymore. It just feels so good, and the feeling of forgiving, having been forgiven - it’s like nothing else on earth. It celebrates healing, it strengthens healing, and yes - it can start the healing process in the first place. Don’t let pride keep you from feeling it.

08/14/2025

Being in the military is hard. Being deployed is hard. Running a business is hard, and running a business while deployed is even harder.

But I wouldn’t trade it for anything right now. There were some hard times over the years, there were definitely some hard times in the first half of 2025. But I still look at it as if it all led to where things are right now today - and things are great right now. There is purpose in my job while deployed, and there is purpose in my job back home at HMC. I feel both purposes so fully right now, and when I feel a sense of purpose, it makes all the hard stuff worth it.

Thinking about the journey as a small business owner, there’s a lot that will break your heart and stress you out more than you ever knew possible. It’s very easy to fail as a small business owner. The path I chose, also being in the military – that just adds to the stress. I survive it and I learned how to thrive in it when I started keeping all my “whys” in the front of my mind. My “whys” go like this: Why did I start my business? Why have I hung onto it instead of selling it? Why did I join the military, and why do I stay in the military? No matter how hard it gets, as long as I have solid answers to those questions, then I never lose sight of my purpose. And there have been times when the stress of the moment makes me doubt myself – it happens to all of us. But you can’t hang onto those moments of doubt and let them spiral out of control to the point where you start making bad decisions. You have to recognize the moments of doubt for what they are, cut out all the negative influences that hold you back, and get in line with your purpose. Get in line with your purpose, and make it be the only thing that matters. That’s how I got through those first five years of owning a business and it’s how I got promoted and became a field grade officer in the Army. And don’t get me wrong, I’m still getting through it. 20 years from now, I’ll still say I’m getting through it. But I’m also glad for the journey, even when it’s hard, because the purpose makes it so worthwhile. I wouldn’t choose a different life than the purpose-driven one I have right now.

06/19/2025

Safety.

The bunker is a place for safety. In the military, they protect us from falling bombs, artillery, and a variety of other attacks. You can run inside one, make sure the door is closed and ride out whatever storms happen around you.

In the civilian world, bunkers are associated with more with survivalism and they offer a sense of control. The world can be uncontrollable, but there is control inside a bunker - it is a space you create so that you can control who has access to you, who has access to what you have. You can build it out of reinforced concrete, steel, lead lining…you can protect yourself from a mumber of threats. You do this for safety, you do this to make sure you’ll be safe. You can absolutely control your sense of safety.

But absolute control comes with a price - isolation. There is a concern that too much time inside a bunker will lead to reduced air supply, and you could die. Too much time inside a bunker is known to cause psychological declines involving depression, anxiety, and personality disturbances. The world is unsafe - build a bunker and exist away from the world. Stay safe - but stay alone. But life all alone inside a bunker isn’t a life that is being lived - it is a life existing within a state of purgatory that we create and stay suspended in while the world goes on outside.

“The Bunker Fallacy” tells us that a focus on bunkers will distract us from more comprehensive solutions for resilience and sustainability, and encourages people to instead integrate survival measures into daily life. This approach forces us to accept risk and vulnerability while also accepting community and mutual support. People are wild cards - they can be unreliable, they can let you down, they are unpredictable. But people can also build you up, they can provide skills and support that you can’t give yourself, and people make up teams - teams get the really big jobs done together. You can’t do it all alone.

I’ve spent some time in bunkers over the past week, everyone in the Middle East has lately. In the immediate moment, it’s about safety - I do have to concern myself with missile strikes now, and the bunker can keep me alive. I duck inside a physical bunker when I need to, but I come right out again when the physical threat is over. I don’t get comfortable in a bunker, I don’t want to be there - it is an immediate means to an end with a desire to exit as soon as I can. It’s a short-term necessity - not a long-term lifestyle.

I’ve been thinking about the psychological bunkers we create and live in inside our minds. A repeated sense of being wounded and threatened can lead a person to close themselves off to others out of a need for self-protection. And that can work for a while; if you close yourself off to others, you do reduce the risk that people will hurt you. But does your self-protection end up hurting you? The mental bunkers we create, do they become prisons? When we close ourselves off to people, we protect ourselves from dishonesty, betrayal and disappointment - but we also close ourselves off to love, friendship and companionship. Our safety will soon give way to loneliness.

What if we instead choose to believe we’ll be okay? What if we evaluate risk and make our choices with the idea that there needs to be acceptable risk? “I can open myself to the possibility of love knowing there is a risk of disappointment but I know I’ll be okay even if my feelings get hurt.” You can say the same about a new job, changing majors in college, reuniting with former friends, etc. We can take chances on good outcomes with the understanding that we are resilient enough to bounce back if we don’t get the good outcomes that we want.

Duck inside your bunker in the immediate crisis and stay safe. If you’ve gotten hurt, repair yourself inside the bunker just enough so that you can fully heal outside the bunker. When the crisis is over, come out. You’ve got to come out of the bunker and come together with the people around you and move forward together. If you’re healing from hurt, do what you must do alone, but let someone in to help you and rebuild your trust in others again. The isolation, the aloneness, the missed experiences and connections - it’s no way to live.

(Picture is the actual bunker I go to when the sirens go off. It’s just for emergencies - no other reason.)

06/09/2025

Deployment certainly throws a wrench in some things, but I’m still going to try to touch base with clients back home one way or another. I remind myself - this isn’t my first rodeo, I did it 2-3 years ago and I made this balance work back then. With some good planning and creativity, I’ll do my best to do it again now. How did I learn to think out of the box and come up with ideas, fallback plans, workarounds…the Army taught me. I’m just being who the Army taught me to be. 🙂