Change: Ready or Not, Here it Comes.

Apologies for skipping last week—chalk it up to Thanksgiving and being more motivated to rest than write a few thousand words for you fine folks. I AM sorry, and also, I know that I’ll do it again. So we’ll all have to agree to give me some grace for my occasional need to rest.

This week, I’m thinking a whole lot about change.

In high school, what seems now like several whole lifetimes ago, my girlfriend had big plans for our future. She pretty much mapped out all the important things, and told me the way it was going to be—I was going to be a psychologist in private practice, and she was going to be my receptionist. That way, we could spend a bunch of time with each other, she could be involved with my business (well, it would be our business), and everything would be perfect. Lots of kids running around, too.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, none of those things ended up happening. She didn’t continue being my girlfriend after we graduated high school, I eventually came to my senses and realized that social work (not psychology) is what I’m meant to do, and I’ve always had a ton of jobs that didn’t involve running my own business. Oh, and no children (aside from our incredible pups).

I don’t say any of that out of a sense of regret—I’m really, really content with my life and the way it has turned out so far. I’m also really, really glad that I ended up marrying the best person in the world rather than that long-ago ex. For the most part, the mistakes I’ve made and the regrettable side quests I’ve gone on have all taught me valuable life lessons and ended up going pretty well, all things considered. So yes, many things ARE perfect. Just very different from what I thought they’d be back in the early 90s.

This is a season of change, for the world in general but also for my wife and I. Today marks the end of an era for our family, as it’s Kellie’s last day working at her current job. And that’s pretty weird for us.

I started at Community Counseling Center in January of 2005. At that point, I had a high school degree and a wide variety of work experiences in all kinds of jobs that had nothing to do with mental health or addiction. Kellie also started working there in January of 2014. Between the two of us, during our time at that agency we’ve earned two Associate’s Degrees, two double-major Bachelor’s Degrees, two Master’s Degrees, and three independent professional licenses. We’ve made (and then lost) more than a few relationships we thought would be lifelong. We’ve grieved the loss of Kellie’s grandmother and dad. Three dogs have become part of our family, and grieved the loss of one of those as well (which might have been the hardest of them all). It has literally been twenty-one years since at least one of us wasn’t employed by CCC, and that’s hard to wrap our minds around.

Think about all the changes you’ve experienced in your own life from your late 20s to your late 40s (if you’re as old as me). In many ways, the pre-CCC world for Kellie and I was a lifetime ago, and we were both very different people back then. Nothing has remained the same for our family between then and now. And so separating out our identity from that agency is, as you might imagine, an endlessly complicated proposition.

You may wonder why Kellie is choosing to leave now—the truth is, there wasn’t some dramatic split or change of heart. It just felt like the right time for her to make a change, and for both of us to be able to move past the CCC era in our lives toward something else entirely. We have both spent countless hours in service of that agency, and we’ve both appreciated the growth opportunities we were given while there.

There’s a well-worn trope in the mental health world that says the community mental health agency is a place for clinicians who are new to the field, and that once you get your independent license and a little experience under your belt, you’ll automatically move on. Once you’ve been taught enough at that training ground, the belief goes, you’ll seek out more money, more challenges, and a better work environment.

Kellie and I have both pushed back against that characterization of the nonprofit mental health world for a long time. We don’t think those types of agencies necessarily deserve that reputation, and we don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that a person couldn’t spend an entire career doing good work at an agency where you feel at home.

We’re both really proud of so many good things that CCC has done in our community over the last twenty-one years. The agency has expanded dramatically, added on a bunch of new treatment options for their clients, and has engaged with the needs of a diverse county in a whole variety of creative ways. Kellie was hired to put a brand-new idea into place: she worked as an Access Therapist. That meant seeing any client who walked through the doors, focusing on their housing or food insecurity needs, collaborating with agencies and resources throughout the area to help increase that client’s stability, in addition to supporting them in taking steps toward their mental health and addiction-related goals. She was not only AN Access Therapist, she was THE Access Therapist. At that time, nobody but Kellie was doing that kind of work in our community, with such great scope and scale of potential needs. Today, CCC has an entire Access Team to fill that role. But when Kellie was doing it, it was all her. That’s something we’ll always be proud of. Kellie did incredible work with children, adults, older adults, families, and couples. She has done hundreds of diagnostic assessments. She has mentored students and new clinicians, and she has served on steering committees and helped to spearhead multiple clinical initiatives to the agency. She’s also been a loud and courageous ally to those in the LGBTQ+ community, as well as a voice within the agency advocating for training and acceptance of the incredibly important work gender-affirming care can provide.

I worked at CCC in a variety of roles, and ultimately ended up serving as a member of the leadership team. I applied (and got) millions of dollars worth of grants for the agency. I began numerous programs which are still in operation today, serving needs that nobody else was addressing in this community. Those programs focused on folks in need of accessible detoxification options, pregnant women who were in early recovery and needed housing and other supports, individuals who were on probation and parole and had struggled to maintain sobriety in community settings, and those who had experienced suicide losses. I helped bring peer support services to the agency, as well as recovery housing, as well as innovative approaches to MAT. I brought prevention services to the agency, as well as securing funding for the Clubhouse (and sketching out the renovations in MS Paint). I was even instrumental in making telehealth happen at CCC (thanks to an incredible therapist who moved out of state and is still doing her thing there). I like to think I was able to make a difference in terms of decreasing stigma related to mental health and substance use disorders on a community-wide level, and in terms of trying to shift perspectives toward a harm-reduction approach. I got to teach, to mentor, to build and maintain programs, and to watch the size and reach of the agency expand over time to where it is now.

Community Counseling Center has made a lot of changes over the years, and lots of them have been good ones. I remember where it was back in 2005, and it’s almost unrecognizably different now (mostly for the better). They’re about to make an even bigger change in 2026—CCC is merging with another long-established agency from Geauga County (Ravenwood) over the next few months. That’s been a change which is really bittersweet for Kellie and I, and we imagine we’re not the only ones in that boat. After 61 years of providing mental health and addiction services in Ashtabula County, CCC is turning into something else next year. And it’s doing that without Kellie and I.

When I brought the garbage out yesterday morning, I was forced by the snowy weather to grab a jacket out of the closet. For the first time in a couple of years, I wore a vintage Community Counseling Center jacket. It gave me a real sense of nostalgia to wear that jacket to pick up breakfast, wore it to the vet’s office, wore it when I ran another couple of errands. It felt like I was going back in time a little bit to have that familiar logo over my heart, and it was weirdly comforting.

You know as well as I do that nothing stays the same. Nothing ever does, no matter what. Yes, I’m not a CCC employee anymore, and after today Kellie won’t be one either. But that’s not the only reason why that jacket is obsolete, and why it represented such a throwback to me—that logo isn’t going to stand for this agency anymore in the new year. CCC is changing, and so are we all. We’re okay with that!

Which brings us back full circle. More than 30 years ago (when Community Counseling Center was barely 30, and I was half that), my girlfriend dreamed of me opening a private therapy practice in partnership with her. That was never going to happen, for a full host of reasons. But that seed of an idea has been sitting there for Kellie and I over the decades, and tomorrow it’s actually happening, believe it or not.

Two years ago, I launched a private practice, and tomorrow, Kellie will be joining the practice full-time. We chose to call it As You Wish Counseling, since having the power to have a voice in your own care is something we massively value. Beyond that, most of you probably recognize the reference to a movie that was instrumental in the earliest days of our relationship. It just fits us, and never fails to make us smile! If you’re interested in learning more about Kellie’s therapeutic style, her Psychology Today profile is here. If you’re looking for an incredible therapist, I might know someone!

And, of course, you can always check out our practice information and reach out with referrals at our website, here.

I wish I had something stirring and meaningful to end this piece with—that I could share some morsel of wisdom with you that would make all the world’s changes feel meaningful, under our control, and like mostly moments of joy and empowerment rather than bringing with them so much fear and anxiety for us all.

But that wouldn’t be very realistic, would it? We all go through changes, all the time. Some of them feel like foregone conclusions (of course my beard would only turn greyer over the years), but some of them feel like they came out of nowhere, and like the very air is getting knocked out of your lungs every time you turn around. Most of the time, the changes we all navigate are some combination of the two. There’s anxiety there, but also hope. There’s deep relief for us at taking control of something we have wanted to do differently, or something new we’ve wanted to focus our attention and effort on.

Kellie and I are beyond excited at the opportunity to work with each other again, for each other, and to continue to build on our decades of making a positive impact in this community. We are thrilled to be small business owners together, to get to make decisions for ourselves instead of navigating decisions others have made for us, to live out our own values through our work.

For today, that’s enough!

My wish for you, this week, is that you are able to consider deeply the changes you’re going through, both the ones you’ve chosen and the ones that have been chosen by others, and figure out what you want your life to look like. You (probably) only get one of those, so shouldn’t you decide how to spend it?

Thanks for reading—you’re the best. Yes, you. :)