Mind & Scholar

I’m Patricia. Licensed Professional Counselor. Homeschooling mother. Retired
military spouse. I have two children, two dogs who run the house whether I agree or
not, and a life in Arkansas that does not need to look impressive in order to be real.

I have a B.S. in Psychology and an M.S. in Counseling from Texas A&M. I have been in
this work more than seventeen years — children and adolescents, families, older adults
living with Alzheimer’s, and a stretch as a community supervision officer and juvenile
probation officer in a Texas drug court. I have sat with the human mind when it is lying,
grieving, performing, collapsing, and trying to become something truer than its habits.
I do not romanticize that. I respect it.

I also teach. I also keep school at home.

We homeschool in a Waldorf rhythm with Charlotte Mason in the spine: living books,
nature study, narration, handicraft, the year’s seasons, the insistence that a child is a
person and not a project. Education, as Mason had it, is an atmosphere, a discipline, a
life. I believe that. I also believe the adult in the room has an inner life that will leak into
the atmosphere whether she admits it or not. So I do the inner work in public enough
that my children do not inherit only my performance.

I read Jung because he took the shadow seriously. Persona is the face we wear so we can
be invited back. Shadow is what we park outside so the face can keep smiling. Most of
what wrecks a home, a church, a homeschool circle, or a marriage is not mystery. It is
projection, envy, unclaimed hunger, and niceness used as a muzzle. I am interested in
that. I will write about it.

I believe in God. I believe He made a world that teaches — dirt, season, body, the living
intelligence in a garden and a tree line — and that paying attention to that world is not a
lesser faith. I do not think He keeps a ledger of every stop sign we roll through. He is too
busy being God.

What you will not find here: a softer version of me designed to be shared in a group I no
longer belong to. What you will find: psychology that does not flatter you, homeschool
that does not pretend children are curriculum, and a woman who stopped asking
permission to take up her own space.

If you are here to be soothed into staying small, I am the wrong writer. If you are here
because something in you is done performing, we can work.