The first thing Courtney McCubbin did when she landed in Cameroon for the Peace Corps was start a tree nursery, which then required her to build a fence around it to protect it from rodents. Once she began getting interest from farmers, she gave them seedlings to plant to help improve soil fertility and to prevent erosion on their lands. She also created a demonstration farm to show native farmers techniques they could use.
While a volunteer in the Peace Corps, McCubbin connected in profound ways to the community, she on her return she began to realize that her interpersonal relationships weren't thriving as much as she would wish. As much as she had been outwardly focused on helping others, she wanted to focus on helping and healing herself, and so she began working one-on-one and doing group work with a psychodynamic psychotherapist.
Now that she’s training to be a therapist herself, McCubbin is acutely aware of lessons she learned when she was “on the other side” of therapy as a client. While focusing on agroforestry, she built a farm with a protective fence so she could grow new seedlings for farmers. While in therapy, she worked on creating boundaries and nurturing her psyche. As a therapist or counselor, she is developing the capacity to provide fertile ground so that something new can grow within the psyche of the clients she sees.
Through my own depth psychological lens, I’ve been keenly aware of the profound erosion of soul in contemporary western culture, which desperately needs to be reforested in a new and different way. Through McCubbin’s willingness to pursue a career in counseling, can now begin to parlay that kind of literal experience into something new, different, and profound in her work with soul.
Read the full blog post or listen to the interview on Pacifica Post
