Lori M. Downing, LMFT Psychotherapy and Counseling Services

01/01/2026

Start the new year off right with Self-love Affirmations.

Year

01/01/2026

Happy New Year to all my Facebook Friends, Family and Followers

Running the race before us:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us" Hebrews 12:1 (NIV).

This verse encourages us to remove anything and everything that slows us down or trips us up in our faith, especially specific sins, unhealthy habits and behavioral patterns that hold us back, so we can finish the race with endurance, keeping our focus on Jesus.

As you move into the 2026 run with intentionality. Identify the things that are holding you back and let them go. Be proactive, intentional and purposeful in all you do. Keep your eyes on the prize ahead.

12/30/2025

Accepting responsibility for how you respond to emotional pain is a key to healing.

In therapy, this is frequently referred to as “internal locus of control”, where you shift from seeing yourself as a passive victim of your circumstances to an active participant in your healing.

Why is this “Hard Truth” so important?

* It helps Break Repeating Cycles: Awareness allows you to identify self-sabotaging patterns and behaviors.

* It Empowers You: While you cannot control what happened to you, it is empowering to know you have the capacity and agency over your current choices and boundaries to change things.

* It helps with Emotional Regulation: Self Awareness -Noticing your feelings and how you "feed" your suffering—through rumination or avoidance—is the first step to stopping it.

12/29/2025

Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life…

I was at my father's retirement party, watching him accept a gold watch with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. Later, he confessed to me, "I don't know who I'm supposed to be now." The script of his life—provider, employee, manager—had ended, and he was left on an empty stage. It was in this exact kind of moment that James Hollis's Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up found its mark. This book is not about retirement planning or gentle self-help for aging. It is a profound, challenging, and psychologically astute Jungian guide for navigating the crucial transition from the first adulthood, built on external expectations, to a second, more authentic adulthood governed by the demands of the soul. Hollis, a renowned Jungian analyst, writes as a wise and demanding guide for those standing at the crossroads of "what was" and "what could be," if only they have the courage to ask the harder questions.

Hollis’s approach is grounded in the stark premise that the strategies of the first half of life—achievement, acquisition, pleasing others, building a persona—inevitably fail us in the second half. What remains is a summons from the unconscious, a call to move from ego-driven adaptation to a soul-directed life. The book systematically explores the archetypal tasks of this transition: confronting our personal history and unlived life, differentiating from the internalized voices of parents and culture, accepting necessary suffering, and learning to live the questions rather than seeking cheap answers. It provides not steps, but a framework for deep reflection: how to identify the "gods" that have governed your life, how to conduct a "life review" to see the patterns you’ve served, and how to embrace the "swamplands" of depression and anxiety as potentially fertile ground for growth. His tone is erudite, uncompromising, and deeply compassionate about the difficulty of the work. This book doesn’t offer comfort; it offers the bracing invitation to become who you were meant to be, not who you were trained to be. It transformed my understanding from “What should I do next?” to “What is my soul asking of me now?”

Ten Tasks for the Second Adulthood

1. The First Adulthood Must Fail for the Second to Begin.
The initial life structure, built on adaptation to external expectations (family, society, career), must prove insufficient, leaving a feeling of emptiness, depression, or restlessness. This crisis is not a breakdown, but the necessary summons to a deeper journey.

2. You Are Here to Outgrow Your Parents, Not to Please Them.
The second half demands a profound psychological separation from the internalized voices of your parents and your childhood environment. Your task is to discover your own authority and values, which may differ radically from those you inherited.

3. Your Unlived Life is Your Most Potent Ghost.
The talents, passions, and potentials you abandoned to meet early-life demands do not disappear. They become a haunting presence, a source of depression and regret, until you find ways to acknowledge and integrate them, however modestly, into your present.

4. Depression is Often the Soul’s Refusal of a False Life.
While clinical depression requires treatment, much midlife depression is a signal from the psyche that you are living a life too small for your soul. It is a call to stop, reflect, and realign with a more authentic path.

5. Suffering is Necessary, But Not Redemptive By Itself.
Pain is inevitable, but it only becomes meaningful when we consciously engage with it, ask what it has to teach us, and allow it to enlarge our perspective and capacity for compassion. Avoiding suffering leads to a shrunken life.

6. You Must Discover the "Gods" You Have Been Serving.
We are all governed by unconscious complexes or "gods"—the god of approval, the god of security, the god of ambition. Individuation requires bringing these ruling powers to consciousness and deciding if you wish to continue serving them.

7. The Goal is Not Happiness, But Meaning.
Happiness is a fleeting byproduct. Meaning is found in taking responsibility for your journey, engaging with life’s complexity, and serving something larger than your own comfort or security—often your own deepest truth.

8. You Are Responsible for Your Own Biography.
Stop blaming your parents, your partner, or your circumstances. While they shaped your story, the second half of life demands you take full authorship of the narrative from this point forward, editing the old script and writing new chapters from a place of conscious choice.

9. Learn to Live the Questions Themselves.
The soul speaks in questions, not answers. "What does the soul want?" "Where have I not been truthful?" The mature task is to hold these questions faithfully, allowing them to guide you, rather than demanding premature, ego-comforting solutions.

10. The Best Gift You Can Give the World is Your Own Becoming.
Your greatest contribution is not what you do, but who you become. A person living an examined, responsible, and soul-directed life radiates a quiet integrity that gives others permission to do the same, healing generational wounds and enriching the collective.

Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life is an indispensable, demanding companion for anyone over 40 (or sensing the call earlier) who feels a quiet desperation beneath their success or a restless hunger for a life that feels truly their own. James Hollis provides the Jungian depth and intellectual rigor that cheerful midlife-crisis clichés utterly lack. This book is for the successful professional feeling hollow, the retiree adrift without a role, the parent whose nest is emptying, and the individual ready to exchange societal approval for soul approval. It offers no easy answers, but it delivers the most valuable map: the one that leads inward, to the source of your own unique and necessary meaning.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/3YHAtiP

You can ENJOY the AUDIOBOOK for FREE (When you register for Audible Membership Trial) using the same link above.

12/29/2025

Learning to Trust one step at a time

Trust the journey, even in uncertainty, knowing you have an inner-compass, God’s grace and supportive people in your life to illuminate the way forward and believing that growth and clarity emerge from taking courageous, small steps similar to a seed growing in darkness.

12/28/2025

It’s your choice!!!

12/26/2025

As we approach the new year what is of your to do list for 2026. Our thoughts and are words are just that, they don’t really mean anything until we take action.

If you want your words to take flight, start planning….it is the crucial first step to moving forward.

To live with intention is to live on purpose. Make your words come alive, you have to act. If you really want to live—you have to be aware and awake. If you want to live life to the full - that is a choice you must make.

12/26/2025

Remember you can’t pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself so you have something to give.

12/26/2025

Some books meet you at the exact moment your life needs a gentle but honest nudge. This one found me in a season where clutter was not just sitting in rooms but quietly sitting in my thoughts. Pressing play on the audiobook felt like inviting a calm but firm friend into my space. Matt Paxton’s voice carried experience, humor, and compassion, not rushed, not preachy, just real. As I listened, it became clear that this was not only about clearing homes but about clearing hearts, habits, and hidden grief. Here are six lessons that stayed with me long after the last chapter faded out.

1. Memories live in us, not in objects: One of the strongest messages in Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff is that memories are not fragile things that disappear when objects go. Matt Paxton gently but repeatedly reminds us that a chair, a box, or an old shirt does not hold love, meaning, or history, we do. Listening to him narrate real stories of families clinging to items out of fear made this lesson land deeply. The book helped me see that holding on too tightly to things is often a sign of not trusting our own capacity to remember. Letting go becomes easier when you realize that the memory remains intact even when the object leaves the room.

2. Clutter is often delayed grief or unresolved change: Through his narration, you can almost hear the pauses when Matt talks about loss, transitions, and life shifts. He makes it clear that clutter is rarely about laziness or disorganization. More often, it is about grief we have not processed or change we have not accepted. The book reframes mess as a message, an emotional backlog waiting to be acknowledged. This perspective brought compassion into my own decluttering journey. Instead of asking why is this still here, I began asking what moment or feeling is attached to this, and do I still need it to move forward.

3. Letting go is a skill, not a personality trait: Matt Paxton dismantles the idea that some people are just good at decluttering while others are hopeless. Listening to the audiobook, you hear him emphasize that letting go is learned, practiced, and strengthened over time. The stories he tells show people growing into the process, not magically transforming overnight. This lesson was freeing. It replaced shame with patience. Decluttering stopped feeling like a test of character and became a skill I could develop with intention and kindness toward myself.

4. Downsizing is not losing, it is choosing: There is a calm authority in the way Matt narrates the concept of downsizing. He does not frame it as deprivation but as decision making. The book teaches that every item you keep should earn its place in your current life, not in a version of life that no longer exists. That idea stayed with me. Downsizing became less about what I was giving up and more about what I was creating space for, clarity, peace, and freedom to move forward without dragging yesterday behind me.

5. Progress matters more than perfection: One thing the audiobook does beautifully is remove pressure. Matt’s voice reassures you that partial progress is still progress. The book discourages all or nothing thinking and celebrates small wins, one drawer, one box, one honest decision at a time. Hearing this out loud made it sink deeper. It reminded me that waiting for the perfect moment or perfect system often keeps us stuck. Forward movement, even when messy, is how change actually happens.

6. Decluttering is an act of self respect and hope: Perhaps the most powerful lesson woven through the book is that clearing space is not just about the home, it is about honoring your future. Matt Paxton speaks from years of watching people reclaim their lives one cleared room at a time. The audiobook carries this hope gently but firmly. Decluttering becomes an act of saying my life is still moving forward, I deserve space to breathe, and I am allowed to choose what comes with me into the next chapter.

Book/Audiobook: https://amzn.to/3MRuBku

You can access the audiobook when you register on the Audible platform using the l!nk above.

12/26/2025

I was in a church pew, hands clenched around a worn bulletin, as the praise band sang a triumphant chorus about God's miraculous healing. My own unanswered prayers for a loved one's recovery felt like lead weights in my chest, making a mockery of the celebration around me. It was in this exact kind of moment that Laura Story's book, When God Doesn't Fix It: Lessons You Never Wanted to Learn, Truths You Can't Live Without, found its mark. This is not a story of a miraculous cure or a platitude-laden "everything happens for a reason." It is a raw, theologically honest memoir of a worship leader and Grammy-winning songwriter whose world was shattered when her husband, Martin, was diagnosed with a life-altering brain tumor. Story writes from the confusing, painful gap between faith and a fixed reality, where the prayer for healing is met not with a cure, but with the daily, grueling work of caregiving and a transformed understanding of God's promises.

Story's approach is grounded in lived, long-term disappointment and a determined search for a sustainable faith. She systematically dismantles the "health and wealth" or "fix-it" gospel—the pervasive belief that enough faith guarantees a happy, problem-free life—and replaces it with a theology of God's sufficiency in the midst of brokenness. The book moves through the stages of her journey: the shock of diagnosis, the desperate prayers for healing, the disillusionment when healing didn't come, and the slow, painful emergence of a new, more resilient faith. It provides not a how-to guide for fixing problems, but a framework for surviving them: how to shift from a prayer for a changed circumstance to a prayer for a changed heart, how to find purpose in the "new normal," and how to understand God's power as being perfected in our weakness. Her tone is vulnerable, honest, and deeply pastoral, free of easy answers but full of hard-won hope. This book transformed my foundational question from "Why won't God fix this?" to "Who is God in the midst of this, and how can I find Him here?"

Ten Truths for When the Miracle Doesn't Come

1. God is More Interested in Your Character Than Your Comfort.
The primary work of God in our lives is not to arrange circumstances for our ease, but to shape us into the image of Christ. This sanctifying work often happens most profoundly in the crucible of sustained, un-fixed difficulty.

2. The "Fix-It" Gospel is a Theological Lie.
The belief that God's primary role is to solve our problems and make us happy is a dangerous distortion of scripture. It sets believers up for a crisis of faith when suffering inevitably arrives, implying their faith was insufficient.

3. Some Broken Things Aren't Meant to Be Fixed; They're Meant to Be Redeemed.
God's plan is not always restoration to a former state, but redemption—the weaving of our broken threads into a new, more beautiful and purposeful tapestry that could not have existed without the fracture.

4. Your "New Normal" is a Holy Ground.
The life you never wanted—the one with the chronic illness, the loss, the persistent struggle—is not Plan B. It is the sacred territory where God has chosen to meet you and reveal a dimension of His grace and presence you could not have known in ease.

5. God's Power is Made Perfect in Weakness, Not in Strength.
Our culture, and often our churches, celebrate strength, competence, and victory. The counter-cultural gospel truth is that God's power and glory are most clearly displayed when we are at our end, dependent, and admitting we have nothing left to offer but our need.

6. The Most Important Prayer May Shift from "Change This" to "Change Me."
When circumstances remain immovable, the transformative work begins within. The prayer becomes, "God, if You won't change my situation, change my heart in it. Teach me to see You, trust You, and love You here."

7. Suffering is Not a Detour from God's Plan; It is Often the Pathway.
We want a faith that bypasses suffering. Scripture shows a God who consistently meets His people in it and leads them through it. The valley of the shadow of death is still a path He guides us on, not away from.

8. Your Story is Not Over, Even if the Chapter is Painful.
A single, devastating chapter does not define the entire narrative. God is the author of a much longer story, and He specializes in bringing hope, purpose, and surprising joy into narratives that seem, from our limited view, to be tragedies.

9. Community is God's Tangible Embrace.
When God doesn't fix it, He often sends His people. The hands that make meals, the shoulders that cry on, and the presence of those who simply sit with you in the silence become the physical manifestation of God's "with-ness" (Immanuel).

10. A God Who Can Be Trusted is Greater Than a God Who is Understood.
The quest for "why" can become a paralyzing prison. The deeper, more peaceful faith is found in releasing the demand for an explanation and choosing to trust the character of a God who loves us, even when His ways are inscrutable.

When God Doesn't Fix It is an indispensable, grace-filled companion for anyone living in the long shadow of an unanswered prayer. Laura Story provides the theological correction and empathetic solidarity that well-meaning but simplistic "claim your healing" messages cruelly lack. This book is for the caregiver, the chronically ill, the bereaved, the disillusioned believer, and anyone whose life looks nothing like the victory testimonies they hear. It offers no guarantee of a fix, but it delivers something more durable: a vision of a faithful God who meets us in the broken places and proves Himself sufficient, even when He is not a mechanic.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/4b2d6rG

You can ENJOY the AUDIOBOOK for FREE (When you register for Audible Membership Trial) using the same link above.

12/26/2025

Grief doesn’t require letting go of love.

Dennis Klass' Continuing Bonds Theory reminds us that adapting doesn’t mean severing ties with the person who died. Instead, many people adapt by finding new ways to stay connected to someone who is no longer physically here.

That connection might look like:
• Talking to them (in your thoughts or out loud)
• Keeping traditions alive
• Holding onto objects, stories, or rituals that keep them present

These bonds aren’t signs of being “stuck.”
They’re signs of love adjusting to a new reality.

For many grievers, maintaining a meaningful connection can be grounding and comforting. The relationship doesn’t disappear. It changes.

Grief support means making room for those ongoing connections, not questioning them or trying to replace them.

Love doesn’t end when a life does.