Happy spring to everyone! I hope all of you have at least felt intimations of spring by now. And, if it’s spring, it’s time to register for Summer Workshop. At the publication of this newsletter, we have 162 registrants. I invite more of you to take another look at the brochure (on the website, if you’ve lost yours) and consider spending a few days with us in peaceful North Georgia focusing on yourself and your work with patients. I, myself, am really looking forward to communing with horses and learning what they have to teach me about myself and how I approach relationships. I just might learn something from humans too.
I want to welcome publicly and personally the new members voted in by EC conference call March 31st: three student members and six full members. Please read about them in detail elsewhere in this issue and be prepared to meet the new full members this summer. Also, I hear from our Membership Chair that we have four more qualified applicants in the process of completing their applications who also want to come to the Summer Workshop. You will have a chance to vet them for the required 30 days, before EC takes a vote on accepting them to membership or not. Please give them your careful consideration as always.
It is with great sadness and appreciation that I acknowledge the death of two of our valued members, E. Mark Stern and Jerry Travers. Each of these men made extraordinary contributions to our community during their lives and will be sorely missed by many of us. You can read our members’ tributes to them within these pages. Above all, I feel acutely aware of the tender fragility of us all and am grateful to be able to share this part of my life journey with each of you.
I find that holding the office of president has given me a good look at the whole of us, some leaving and some coming in, some taking on the honor and responsibility of holding office or chairing a committee or working behind the scenes, and some watching or resting. Your sincere caring for the Academy and our mission is most evident to me as we approach each of our national meetings. You all warm my heart and some of you amaze me. Giving my time and energy and heart to the Academy has come to benefit me in unanticipated, but deep and permanent ways.
For several years I have had the habit of listening to music while I take my walks and imagining myself singing many of these songs to you in the talent show. I just recently realized that a part of that fantasy (the part that doesn’t have to do with exhibitionism) has to do with wanting to sing you love songs, songs about ecstasy and despair, about unrequited love and being steadfastly loved, about falling in and out of love, songs about how beautiful you are and sometimes how not beautiful you are. In my dreams and in my life, you are my chosen family, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, and, just maybe, until death do us part.
Lorrie Hallman,
AAP President
No comments:
Post a Comment