Purple Lotus Counseling, LLC

01/17/2026

Gratitude Weekend #1!

If you saw our post on Thursday, you'll know that we are starting a new series this year, of Gratitude Weekends.
*If you feel comfortable sharing something you are grateful for, please comment on this post and perhaps you'll be featured in a future Gratitude Weekend post (with your permission!).*

To start off this new series, two of our staff members, Carley and Garrett, want to share gratitude for our boss, peer clinician, and friend - Katie.

Katie is the owner of Purple Lotus Counseling, and is one of the greatest professional assets that we have as clinicians. Her expertise in the field offers an immense amount of knowledge and support, clinician intervention, assistance and ideas. Katie is caring, strong, intelligent, and such a great person. No matter the struggles we've experienced, Katie is always there to lean on, offer advice, and guide us through the best process. We value Katie for so many things, including her honesty, valuable feedback, understanding, compassion, flexibility, zest for life, humor, fun and warm personality.

We serioulsy cannot say enough how much we appreciate you, Katie! Thank you for all that you do!

The staff at PLO encourage you to recognize gratitude for someone in your life today, tomorrow, or this coming week. Sharing the positivity in this new year!

01/15/2026

For 2025, we honored "Mindfulness Mondays," a way to share resources, tricks/tips, videos, techniques, etc. to practice mindfulness in our day-to-day lifestyles.

Now that we have entered 2026, we want to continue the idea of mindfulness, but add a positive-slope and practice "Gratitiude Weekends."

Weekends in 2026, on Saturdays or Sundays, you'll see a post from the PLO team regarding something we are grateful for, celebrating, appreciating, or finding positivity in. BUT, there's a fun twist to this:
We want to see YOUR positivity, too!
If you feel comfortable doing so, comment on this post or future Gratitude Weekend posts, and share with the PLO staff something you are grateful for, and perhaps it'll be featured in an upcoming post.

If you don't feel comfortable sharing, feel free to practice this on your own, embrace your gratitiude for something in your life in this moment. As always, please take care of yourself through the change of the seasons, and if you want to connect with one of our clinicians, please reach out via our website!

01/01/2026

Goodbye to 2025....hello 2026!
Welcome to the New Year!

As we start this new journey, we'd like to hear from you all what you'd like to see this year!
What are your goals for this new year, maybe some new years resolutions or dreams, business plans, personal plans, vacations or ways to better yourself this year!

We also would love to know what you'd like to see from us this year:
-Would you like to continue to see Mindfulness Mondays, or something new!
-Lunch and learns, or small educational videos?
-More sharing of resources?

Let us know in the comments!

12/29/2025

Final week!! Offering another tip to encourage positivity and peace during the holidays.
Week 1 - Letting go of expectations/Set and maintain boundaries
Week 2 - Practicing grounding and peace (kids)
Week 3 - Understand your level of control
Week 4 - Holding gratitude
Week 5 - Take care of yourself
Week 6 - Connect, and start fresh

Week 6 - Connect and start fresh

Wrapping up this 6 week holiday mindfulness monday course, we encourage you to take the skills you have learned and apply them not just during the holidays, but every day. Life is chaotic, stressful, busy, overwhelming, loud, and sometimes too much to handle. Sometimes finding peace in just taking time for yourself, maintaining your boundaries, letting go of your expectations and just “being,” is what you need most!

In a few short days we will say goodbye to this year and start fresh in 2026. Reflect back on this year:

-What would you have done differently, if you could? How would that change the lessons you learned this year?
-What can you grow from this year, and take with you to start again next year?
-If you had goals this year, did you accomplish them? If yes - way to go! What next? If not, hey, that’s okay. Chances are you still tried, be proud of yourself.

Thank you for sticking with us this year, and we’ll see you in 2026!

12/25/2025

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year to you all, from Katie, Garrett and Carley Jo, the staff at Purple Lotus Counseling!

Wishing you a safe and happy holiday season.

12/23/2025

A note from our owner: It is with the most gratitude that we thank our wonderful donors for their contributions to the PLO Hope Fridge Drive. Today our team dropped off donations at People of Progression and The Hope Fridge. We hope that these donations help put food on the tables and warm items on the hands and feet of our wonderful community. Please remember that PLO will continue to accept donations through the winter and will drop off as our boxes get full. Thank you all again for showing up for those in need and we wish you very happy holidays.
As a personal note, I want to thank my team for the work they’ve done, not only on this project, but throughout the year. I am truly in awe of you both and couldn’t be more proud to call you colleagues.
Once again, happy holidays all.

With love, The PLO team 💜

12/22/2025

Every week from now until the week of New Years, offering another tip to encourage positivity and peace during the holidays.
Week 1 - Letting go of expectations/Set and maintain boundaries
Week 2 - Practicing grounding and peace (kids)
Week 3 - Understand your level of control
Week 4 - Holding gratitude
Week 5 - Take care of yourself
Week 6 - Connect, and start fresh

Week 5 - Take care of yourself

Here are two wonderful mindfulness and meditation videos to engage in this holiday season.
Take time for yourself, find a quiet moment and allow yourself to feel peace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT9CULSckzw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0RiuuwSXFw

How do I deal with talking to family members I don’t agree with? How can I learn to tolerate my relatives around the holidays? How do I stay calm during the ...

12/15/2025

Every week from now until the week of New Years, offering another tip to encourage positivity and peace during the holidays.
Week 1 - Letting go of expectations/Set and maintain boundaries
Week 2 - Practicing grounding and peace (kids)
Week 3 - Understand your level of control
Week 4 - Holding gratitude
Week 5 - Take care of yourself
Week 6 - Connect, and start fresh

Week 4 - Holding Gratitude

Gratitude. When you hear that word, what does it mean?
Appreciation. Peaceful. Acknowledgement. Respect. Loving. Thankful.

I think I hear gratitude and I immediately go to the word thankful.
Thankful for my family.
Thankful for holiday celebrations.
Thankful for warm meals.
Thankful for getting together with those we don’t see often.
Thankful for warmth and comfort.

During the chaos of the holiday season, it’s really easy to forget to hold gratitude in the things around us. If you’re cooking a meal, traveling, having people over, prepping and cleaning, the meaning of the holidays and the peace that we get to enjoy them often gets overlooked.

We encourage you, this holiday season, to remind yourself of the things you hold gratitude for. This can be done by writing down the things you’re thankful for each morning, picking one thing a day throughout the rest of the month and truly appreciating it, or looking around amidst the hustle and bustle of the season and taking it all in.

Other ways to give back in gratitude, are sharing with those who are hoping for the Christmas miracle for warmth, a good meal, clothing or shelter. Giving back to places like warming shelters, food pantry’s, donating clothes or gently used items. A great way to do this is donating to the food and essential items drive we are having here at Purple Lotus!! We have two boxes in our office by the front desk, and we are looking for non-perishable items, toothbrushes, toothpaste, underwear, socks, hats, mittens, gloves, essential items. These will be donated to the Hope Fridge in Menasha to give back this holiday season.

12/12/2025

Reminder!!! ‼️

Our food and essentials drive us still going on, and will be all winter!!! The boxes are located at the front office desk, or you can connect with a staff member!

Purple Lotus Counseling is doing a food and essentials donation gathering to benefit The Hope Fridge located behind People of Progression in Menasha, WI. We will house a donation box in the entryway of our location where donations of non-perishable foods and essentials such as socks, mittens, hats, toothpaste, paper products etc, can be dropped off. We are hoping to have a box of goods to drop off at People of Progression before our next major holiday. We plan to keep our box in our entryway for the whole winter season, and we will make donations as the box gets full, but we are hoping we can help some families, before the next holiday, provide food for their tables.

If you would like to donate, please stop into our location during business hours (typically someone is here between 9am-5pm M-Th and 9am-noon Fri). If for some reason, someone is not here when you arrive, please email Katie at Katie@purplelotuscounselingllc.com to arrange a drop off time, or she can pick up a donation. If you would like to donate a gift card that can be used to purchase items for The Hope Fridge donation, please also reach out to Katie and she will arrange this.

12/08/2025

Every week from now until the week of New Years, offering another tip to encourage positivity and peace during the holidays.

Week 1 - Letting go of expectations/Set and maintain boundaries
Week 2 - Practicing grounding and peace (kids)
Week 3 - Understand your level of control
Week 4 - Holding gratitude
Week 5 - Take care of yourself
Week 6 - Connect, and start fresh

Week 3 - Understand your level of control

Continuing in our holiday Mindfulness series, it’s important to highlight the level of control that we each have during the holiday seasons. When we talk about control, we’re not focusing on who brings what food, time we eat our meal, where we celebrate and so on. While those are technically points of control, they don’t have as great of an affect on our mental health as others. Things like boundaries, conversational topics, time-limits and self care are the focus.

Understanding your level of control during the holidays with family means recognizing you can't change others, but you can control your own reactions, boundaries, and self-care; focus on things like setting limits on time/topics, communicating needs, and managing expectations to reduce stress and maintain well-being. A friendly reminder to yourself during this season, holidays may not be perfect, and that’s okay. They're stressful, busy, sometimes loud, or sometimes too quiet, and prioritizing your well being is important!

How do we maintain our level of control during the holidays, here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re at a family gathering and Aunt Jane Doe asks you about something that you aren’t comfortable talking about (this could be whatever is best for you and your boundaries! Often topics like politics, health, pregnancy/infertility, partnerships etc. are common), it’s probably going to evoke some negative feelings being forced to talk about this topic. Here’s where that fun word communication comes into play. Be assertive but respectful about your needs, like changing a subject that makes you uncomfortable.

12/03/2025

A note from our owner, and the team at PLO:

As we are in the middle of the holiday season, our staff has done some reflecting on the privileges we all have, and on the members of our community who don’t share in these same privileges. We put our heads together and decided we all wanted to try and offer support and resources to members of our community who may be struggling to make ends meet this season.

Purple Lotus Counseling is doing a food and essentials donation gathering to benefit The Hope Fridge located behind People of Progression in Menasha, WI. We will house a donation box in the entryway of our location where donations of non-perishable foods and essentials such as socks, mittens, hats, toothpaste, paper products etc, can be dropped off. We are hoping to have a box of goods to drop off at People of Progression before our next major holiday. We plan to keep our box in our entryway for the whole winter season, and we will make donations as the box gets full, but we are hoping we can help some families, before the next holiday, provide food for their tables.

If you would like to donate, please stop into our location during business hours (typically someone is here between 9am-5pm M-Th and 9am-noon Fri). If for some reason, someone is not here when you arrive, please email Katie at Katie@purplelotuscounselingllc.com to arrange a drop off time, or she can pick up a donation. If you would like to donate a gift card that can be used to purchase items for The Hope Fridge donation, please also reach out to Katie and she will arrange this.

12/01/2025

Continuing in our journey of Mindfulness Monday, we will be doing a series of 6 tips to get you through the holiday season. Every week from now until the week of New Years, offering another tip to encourage positivity and peace during the holidays.
Week 1 - Letting go of expectations/Set and maintain boundaries
Week 2 - Practicing grounding and peace
Week 3 - Understand your level of control
Week 4 - Holding gratitude
Week 5 - Take care of yourself
Week 6 - Connect, and start fresh

Week 2 - Practicing Grounding and Peace

As we work through this series of Mindfulness in the Holidays, today we focus on grounding, and allowing peace. This can be done in a number of ways; some including the grounding techniques we’ve shared previously (i.e. Visualization, 5 Senses, Meditation), or new ways, such as sitting in silence and allowing yourself to grief if you are missing someone this holiday season, maintaining the boundaries you have worked hard to put in place, or enjoying the moment

The holidays are SO busy and we are constantly rushing around. If you are hosting, visiting family and traveling, or spending time with those near you, there is a rare opportunity for peace. We encourage you to sit in the moment this holiday season, soaking in the smiles, positive moments and comfort of those close to you.

Encourage your kids to do the same! The holidays are such an exciting time for many, and that may include becoming overstimulated with all of the hustle and bustle.

Try this Snowing Sensations meditation with your kiddos!

Use your imagination to sense the snowflakes on your skin. A different type of Body Scan!This calming brain break is suitable for children aged 5-11.