Margaret Anne Knight, MA, LPC, LISAC

12/31/2024

As 2024 curls away and 2025 is poised to unfurl, I find this piece, written awhile ago by Parker Palmer, to be a practical metaphor that I want to keep in mind in the midst of the blizzards of stimuli happening more frequently & intensely all around us. It seems to me that there are more “blizzards” now than I recall from past decades, but I also know we have always had blizzards. Threats, devastation, tumult, heartbreak, death, distraction, trivia, invective, rumor, hate, greed, terror, uncertainty, clamor, lies, and so much more.
I’ve lately, coincidentally, been recalling a story from a favorite childhood book about someone tying a rope between the door of the Little House and the door of the barn as a blizzard approached, so it’d be possible to care for the inhabitants of the barn and still make it home safe across the yard for as many trips as were needed for as long as the blizzard lasted. I don’t know why it’s come to mind of late, and when I read this piece, I was a bit startled at the synchronicity. As a child I’d not yet experienced weather so intense you could get lost in it. But the story caught my imagination and stayed with me until I did have experience in such conditions.
The way Palmer writes about coping with the “blizzards” occurring in our world and lives and psyches has given me a way to engage with that story in more depth than I’d thought to before now. I’m visualizing a rope that gives me a fixed point in a turbulent, freezing white-out, fastened between where I go out from and where I must go out to. How do I come to know who and what is so important that I must, moreover I want to, go out in the blizzard to the barn? And where is my home, and what comfort & support is contained within, that calls me to hold fast to my rope in the midst of the cacophony and buffeting and iciness, so I return safely for repose and joy and restoration?
I think maybe I’ve got the beginnings of a schema to help me steer away from the heavy weather I’ve sensed inexorably forming on the path ahead.

The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul. —Leonard Cohen Building on Cohen's refrain, author and educator Parker Palmer reflects on the importance of having a "rope" in the "blizzard" of our personal and professional lives t

10/06/2024

💡Timely reminder.💛

01/02/2024

I hope for all a year of joy, contentment, satisfaction, and opportunities we’ve been hoping for. I wish us all to have energy to continue walking our paths, strength to continue weaving our tapestries, wisdom to know we’re enough, and courage to face life as it comes, moment by moment.❤️‍🔥 #2024

11/11/2022

Just a thought as we head into the Holiday Season…🤔💆‍♀️🎐🛋️

10/01/2022

10/01/2022

“Remind yourself that feelings of confusion and struggle…won’t last forever.” A nutshell description of the intervention is in paragraph three.🎐

Reframing erroneous beliefs alleviates the emotional upheavals that beset young people on the cusp of adulthood

09/11/2022

Sheila Tobias literally saved my sanity and my esteem. Reading her Ms. Magazine article about “math anxiety” in 1976 was like reliving my 7th & 8th grade accelerated math program. I fought tooth & nail to get into the program, ‘cuz I wanted to go to med school, then crashed & burned spectacularly.

Her research and writing described exactly what happened to me in that junior high program. All but two of my classmates were boys, and the original teacher, who left to go on maternity leave, was replaced by a male who was an engineer, not a teacher. I tanked, studying my ass off, then taking tests and having no comprehension of what the questions meant or how to get to the answers. It was all written in Greek. I had loved math and been good at it, but now I felt like I was not only crazy, but stupid. I kept trying and failing. First time I had ever failed at anything in school. I was mortified. It’s why my ma got me into a UofA research program that taught me how to cope with anxiety.

By my frosh year in high school, I feared & hated anything to do with math, which of course seriously hampered my efforts in science, which I had loved. Because I was already starting in music and theatre, I at least had an alternate (and perfect) path to a degree and work I loved.

Hearing her talk in college, then reading “Overcoming Math Anxiety” was like a weight being lifted off my whole being. I cried when I read it, and I’m tearful now remembering her. I had thought she was a mathematician, but she was a pioneering giant in feminism & Women’s Studies. She was wicked smart. She was the first person I know of who talked about how people learn in different ways, not “have different kinds of brains”, which I remember being told as an explanation of my failure.

I think she may also be a reason I was drawn towards being a counselor. She noticed an anomaly, then studied it, then identified a very real syndrome, then helped people like me to understand and address it. I’ve even used her work with some of my clients from time to time. I always felt fortunate that she came to the U of A when I was there, or I might not have discovered her book. She lived here, and actually died in 2021, but it went unremarked.

What a strange jolt of a flashback to part of how I became who I am. Thank you & Rest In Peace, Ms. Tobias.🌹

Feeling jittery about math — and altogether avoiding it — “is a serious handicap” that often affected women, she wrote in Ms. magazine in 1976, followed by a book on the subject.

08/30/2022

Just a thought as we’re heading into the busy-ness of Fall. KISS. Keep It Simple, Sweetie!

08/29/2022

Just for All of us.
Whatever it is, we’ll get through it. We’ll help each other. It’s what we do.❤️‍🔥

Veronica and the Baby Boo's short video with ♬ original sound

08/16/2022

This spoke to me and helped me articulate what has been going through my mind since I stumbled across the live feed of a car burning inside of a house in my sister’s neighborhood, then later found out what had happened.
I thought, “I fu***ng *hate* this disease.”
Addiction is not a choice. No one in their right mind would choose it and the inevitable insanity, chaos, and devastation that results from it. No. One. Addiction is a disease of the brain. It’s like brain cancer and MS. It can be treated and managed and sometimes put into remission, but not completely cured. (God, I wish…)
Those of us who have it did not wake up one day and ask for it. We likely have a gene, a family history. Occasionally, you don’t know why in hell you have it. Our actions & thoughts when we’re in active addiction make no effing sense at all. Not to us, not to those upon whom we inflict our behavior, with its ensuing pain and suffering. We know we’re doing bad and wrong things, and we find ways to lie to ourselves about that. And we lie to you, hoping maybe you won’t give up on us.
The drug we use is not all that important, except for getting us to whatever state we’re hoping will bring us peace or satisfaction or whatever tf we’re hoping to find. It never does, and if it does, those feelings always go away, leaving us confused, ashamed, scared, hurting, and *wanting to try it again*! See? It makes no sense.
Some of us manage to get into remission. Sadly, one of the signal symptoms by which addiction is diagnosed is - wait for it- relapse! Ain’t that a bitch? Relapse is so expectable that it’s a symptom!
More often than not, we’re also fighting other disorders of the mind & brain. There is no respite.
Some of us manage to stay in remission, but that takes heart-and-back-breaking work and enormous amounts of resources and support, more support than we feel like we deserve when we’re first trying, and more resources than we have because those went up our nose, down our throat, in our arm, and we’re likely in Really Bad straits. Our own fault, say we and everyone nearby. Get tf over it. Just do better, dammit.
I don’t think people with MS or tumors have that particular piece to work through, and I hope nobody’s tsk-tsk-ing over them, heads shaking in consternation. That reaction is saved for addicts. It’s not helpful - we already beat you to the punch of despising and flagellating us.
If you’ve ever had to give up pretty much everything in your life (friends, work, activities you love, people you love, places you love, identity) to try to build a life that’s radically different than the one you’ve been used to for years, you’ve had a taste of what it’s like to attempt to get into recovery.
If, while doing that, you’ve had people who matter to you angrily & rightfully reject you, and people you’ve been close with cheering for you to rejoin them drinking and getting high, not because they mean harm, but because they really miss you, you’ve had a glimpse.
In addition to those, if you’ve spent every minute of every day feeling all of the sharp emotions substances used to dull, plus the shame of old behavior burning through your marrow, added to the actual sense that your insides are screaming because some little cue tripped you into wanting to get wasted more than you’ve ever wanted anything in your life, you’ve had a clue.
*If you’ve experienced *all* of those together in a running series of weeks and months that seem like they’ll never end and you’ll never get better, then you’re probably an addict in recovery, or you’ve tried for it.
If you don’t understand any of this, that’s good. I’m glad for you. It’s not understandable unless you’ve got the disease. And I really hope neither you nor anyone you care about has it. I don’t wish it on my worst enemy.
I grieve for Anne Celeste Heche, and for the hundreds of thousands of addicts worldwide who die every year, leaving wounded loved ones and burning rubble in their wake.
I wish we could overcome our valid frustration and learned disdain to find compassion for people who are in a vicious struggle with a chronic, progressive, & terminal disease. I hope we can set aside snark and offer heartfelt condolences to *everyone* in the dead addict’s life who is left to endure bereavement while also clearing away debris & smoke damage.
I fu***ng *hate* this disease.

Compassion seems to be doled out only to the best-behaved among us.

06/05/2022

Stick to the Basics. Be Decent. That is All.❤️‍🔥

1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don't take anything personally.
3. Don't make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.