About Aaron Pascoe
It was early morning when Ira* awoke.
The room was still full of sleep. It looked different to him than in the daylight hours.
There was no sound; just the darkness caught in the moon’s lunar light which permeated the room on an ocean of air.
Ira gazed out the windowpane into the nighttime world. Looking out through the window, he could see that the darkness of night was receding, and the soft dark indigos and violets were stretching across the horizon as the nighttime greeted the day.
It was in this moment that something stirred in Ira. A thought rippled through his mind. He sighed, holding his eyes back from gravitating over to the alarm clock as if not knowing the hour would spare him from the reality of his world.
It was in this quiet, still moment that Ira realized he had become lost unto himself. Swept away by so many hurried currents of our modern-day world. His life had changed him.
There had been so many different transitions, traumas, challenges and demands over the years. But most concerning to him was the feeling that his life was missing something; that he had overlooked some crucial piece. He couldn’t describe it to himself, but he knew the feeling.
Ira wanted more from his life, his relationships, his purpose. He wanted to feel part of the tapestry of life and not like a single thread pulled out and hanging loose.
In the new light of the morning glow, he made a promise to himself. No longer would he wait for change.
*composite client
Life is a journey
I believe that our lives are a journey that unfolds before us, leading us on a path of remembering. The purpose of our journey is to arrive back Home, whatever that means for each of us.
We are but wanderers, seekers, and explorers. We give ourselves to this life to expand our views, to be changed, transformed, and sometimes broken open in order to cleanse us of the old and prepare us for new life.
Over time our stories become the lens we view the world through, the filter we hear life through, and the stories we come to tell ourselves about living in this world.
Life offers us a variety of experiences, and from these experiences we make meaning of life and our part in it. However, some life experiences shake and rattle us to our core. They frighten, haunt, exact a price upon us, and can at times keep us stuck in suffering and torment.
These experiences, too, become part of our story. In becoming part of this story, they come to live in us and affect us in ways unknown and untold.
Changing our life means changing the relationship we have with our own personal story. Retelling that story in a way that allows us to grow instead of wither.
When you find that the path has become unfamiliar and you don’t quite know or understand the signposts along the way, it may be time to pause.
What can therapy do for you?
Sometimes this life can lead us away from ourselves, down paths strange and wild. We find the person we once were has been transformed, and the person we have now become is unknown and unfamiliar to us.
We look for those parts of ourselves that know meaning, purpose, passion. Though we seek and call out unto them, our own echoes return to us unanswered and unacknowledged.
When we come to this place in our lives, we realize that going back to who we once were is not possible. Life has changed us, seasoned us, and may even have broken us open in ways we think are unrepairable.
We stand separated from the life we once lived, the dreams we once had. The meaning of our journey has receded from the shore of our being and drifted out to sea toward horizons unidentified.
Or maybe life is asking a lot from you right now; and you are leaning into a change, challenge, or transitional space.
To laugh with every cell in your body; to feel the warmth of the sun embrace your soul; to look out the window of your eyes upon a world that welcomes you fully; to feel whole, empowered, and a deep sense of belonging – you deserve this gift.
What can I offer you as your therapist?
Wherever you are on your life’s journey, a guide can be helpful. Someone who can walk beside you, someone you can trust to hold the lantern, and let you find your way. Someone in service of your best self.
It takes a profound amount of courage and commitment to start to look for those pieces and parts that have escaped or lie hidden from us.
Psychotherapy is one way of journeying back to yourself. To discovering your uniqueness, your connection, your belonging with the whole of life.
My role is not to heal you or tell you what you need to do, but rather to hold up the lantern and illuminate the shadows of your world. To guide you along your path back home to the heart of your being; to remember what you know so perfectly but may have forgotten. To discover that the healing you seek has always resided within you.
Perhaps you’re looking to find your way back to wholeness, meaning, purpose. Or maybe you just want to lean a little more into the gravity of change. I can help.
It is in our moments of greatest challenge, adversity, pain, and conflict that we can also experience grace, peace, love, and ease.
Healing is about partnership. In considering whether we will work together, it is important we both make the commitment to show up fully, in whatever way we both know best.
If you are here, it is possible – even likely – that the very reason you have come is to discover how to step more fully into the fullness of your being; how to unearth who you truly are.
A Little About My Journey
I started out my professional career as a plumber and pipefitter, working my way from small residential to industrial construction building water and sewage treatment plants.
It was not till years later that I would answer the call that would lead me to become a practicing psychotherapist with my own private practice.
This is the surreal part; when I reflect on it, my journey to get to this place in my life seems to make sense. Back then when it was happening, it caused me such angst, trepidation, and intense fear. I felt very lost and confused, but there always seemed to be some kind soul who would show up in some way to help.
I think of Joseph Campbell’s idea of answering the call. I guess that is who I am – someone who answered the call to fulfill a need.
All my past experiences in life now seem to fall into a sequential order. Here a joy, there a sorrow, some somberness, a little revelation, and a heaping mound of mystery. All these guests seem to have been seasoning me, weathering me, molding me for some continuing purpose.
I believe I was called into this helping profession, and I say this very humbly. What I realized while in my clinical internship is that I get to take part in the Play of Life in a very different way than most people do. I bear witness to the larger tapestry of the human drama which unfolds in the countless individuals with whom I sit.
Within this beautiful eclectic tapestry of life, one can over time see the interconnections and patterns in humanity. I find it such an honor to be in a role that offers hope, discovery, and transcendence.
In all the various places I have worked with clients, one thing has been abundantly clear – everyone yearns for acceptance both from themselves and from the other. Compassion, love (agape kind of love), a willingness to understand, or to stand with another human being who is in the doldrums of despair or trauma – this work takes one across the universe of human experience through encountering the present.
The importance of this work for me is twofold. One reason is in helping others find their own authentic self. To meet people where they are in the dark woods of their life, lost along their path, and confronted by the ghosts that haunt them, as well as to help people step closer to what they feel is their highest potential.
The second reason is that I see something seriously wrong with the way our society is living today. We have lost our connection to our own authenticity. We have become alienated from ourselves and each other. We have lost touch with nature, and in general made a real mess of things.
Our health care system has failed us in significant ways. People are not empowered, and they are hurting.
I believe that in connection with the physical, psychological and emotional distress that is manifesting in all sorts of violence and discord, we are also suffering from a kind of soul sickness. A sickness we share both as individuals and as a society.
We have become automatons serving a machine world and at risk of becoming machines ourselves. But we are not machines.
We are neither separate from nature, nor from each other. If this profession has taught me one thing, it is that we are more connected and related than we can ever imagine – and more powerful than we ever dreamed.
Something personal:
It would be unfair to ask you to share your story with me without giving something personal about myself.
I still very much enjoy working with my hands and do so whenever I can. I am a big gear head. I love 90s Japanese sports cars and have one I love to drive and work on when the weather and workload permit.
I like to travel, read philosophy and spend time with my six-year-old son, who teaches me countless lessons about life, adventure, wonder, and discovery.
Like you, I, too, am healing old wounds, traumas, and leaning into my own sunrise of growth. I like spending time in nature, listening to music, playing the guitar.
Lastly, every few years I travel to India to visit family and re-immerse myself in the deep spiritual waters that guide and nourish my soul.