I’ve been on Medium three months and I’m happy about it. — Hello! Let me introduce myself. My name is Milana Marsenich. I was named after my father, whose name was Milan. It took a long time for me to realize I was named after him. As far as I was concerned, his name was Dad. I live in Northwest Montana near…

And neither do I. — I’m going against conventional wisdom here. Someone, long ago, said you have to kill your darlings. Or murder them. Whichever you prefer. It’s often attributed to William Faulkner but can be traced back to an English writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. I first heard it in a poetry class that I…

Going with the flow and allowing time to pass I used to think that a person could get rid of intrusive thoughts by countering them, or replacing them, with a believable, more enjoyable thought. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This is the exact wrong thing to do. While working…

After years of rejection, I finally feel like a writer. I was going to write about something else today, maybe a fiction piece, or maybe about the time during the initial covid shutdown when I was all dressed up in an RV park in Bandon, Oregon with nowhere to go…

Parts Retrieval, Internal Family Systems, Inner Child Work — Not so long ago I asked a shamanic counselor, how do I, a mental health therapist, work with my clients who might not be open to the concept of soul retrieval. She talked about both inner child work and parts work and suggested that I shift the language so that…

1895 — Before I knew about dogs, before I knew about children, I fell in love. He was a handsome Slavic man, with sharp cheekbones and dark skin, a physic so fine and full, the absolute embodiment of one come down from the mountains. His home, Montenegro, far over the sea, had…

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. To hear the story told, you’d think that Francine Shapiro, a psychologist, came upon EMDR by chance. And you’d be right. She was walking through the park, feeling bad about something that had happened at work, and moving her eyes from one…

Some strategies to calm an active mind — Let’s firs review the rules for good sleep Go to bed only when sleepy Get out of bed when you can’t sleep. Get out of bed at the same time each day. Use the bedroom only for sleep and sex. Refrain from taking daytime naps. Steps to Solving Insomnia: Increasing Sleep Drive Being tired is not the same as being sleepy.medium.com If you are following the above rules and your mind still won’t shut…

In the Anaconda Pintler Wilderness in Montana — For years I’ve wanted to hike to Goat Flat. Each year I spend a week backpacking with my friend, Ellen, in the mountains of Montana. And each year she says, “You need to hike Goat Flat.” She adds, “The wildflowers are unbelievably stunning, but there is no water up there…