Being a stranger is third, second and first nature to me. Of course I am technically a stranger, a foreigner, not born in those parts. But even as a child, I can’t remember feeling I belonged anywhere. The most comfortable I ever felt was at my most anonymous, amongst a crowd of indifferent passersby or in a rush hour Tube carriage, in the heart of London. Now don’t get me wrong: being a stranger who can’t quite belong is not such a bad thing. It affords a certain degree of freedom and a privileged perch on the margins from which to observe, enquire, question and sometimes, only sometimes, make sense of the chaotic mess of our co-created world.
It also renders those rare moments of true connection achingly precious and cherished.
Choosing the Minster Centre to train as a psychotherapist was an absolute random fluke. It could have been the Metanoia Institute, and then where would I be now?... Joke aside - and also putting aside the gruelling nature of the training, the frustrations over perceived inadequacies, the exhaustion of unrelenting self-reflection, the hopeless quest for authenticity, the paralysing shame of struggling to reveal it- finding the Minster Centre standing in all its ever so tatty splendour in the unkempt garden of the unpromising Mapesbury Road was like finding a family of sorts: far from perfect, full of conflicts and contradictions, but somehow sharing a language and an understanding: I hurt. We hurt. People hurt. They hurt in a myriad different ways, for a myriad different reasons, and there are a myriad different ways in which we can meet them and say: “You’re not alone, at least for a little while”. For the first time, my experience felt valid, my responses natural and justified. Windows opened and the sun streamed in. It made it all the harder when it had to end. “You must always think about the end from the beginning” is one of a therapist’s mantra. I did learn it but it doesn’t make the end any easier.
It was hard for me to leave the Minster Centre. I managed to pull and stretch my time within those comforting walls and spend next to nine years training on and off. Some sort of record I’m sure. But it couldn’t last forever. Even harder was my exile from London. A year or so before qualifying, I relocated with my family to a small market town in Gloucestershire. It only just manages to hang on to the edge of the Cotswolds but is not quite as twee as might be expected, an ode to middle England dreams and middle class aspirations, it is firmly rooted in the middle of the road. Here I finally finished writing my dissertation in a fever of late nights and impossibly early mornings, at the same time as I attempted to manage the often clashing demands of a teenager, a toddler and an infant. But when the day came when it was all over and I pushed my chair back and stood up from my desk and stepped out of my new front door, I was a stranger once more, both untethered and trapped.
In my discomfort, I sought community and reached out to a local online networking group of counsellors and psychotherapists. A few weeks passed before a message caught my eye: “Hi, I am thinking of starting a creative peer supervision group. Contact me if you are interested.” I responded immediately. Of course I was interested! It sounded right up my street. It wasn’t long before a group was set up by Ada. I will call her Ada. It is not her real name, but she wouldn’t have liked the exposure, and she loved that name.
A small but perfectly formed group of us met in Ada’s kitchen, and as we huddled around her small table, steaming mugs comfortably held in hands, we introduced ourselves in turn as is usually prescribed in such gatherings. It is no understatement to say that I was delighted when Ada mentioned she had trained at the Minster Centre. It may be trite, but I felt an instant connection with Ada, as much as I desperately willed it into existence I suppose. It felt like she had handed me a link back to my family, my Minster family.
Ada had in fact trained under the fearsome Helen Davis, and would often describe in the years of our acquaintance the challenges she gleefully presented to the students in what felt like the expectation of pain, the necessity of pain. Her training as she recounted it felt tough, tougher than what I had known under the kindly direction of Sue Daniels: more often a clash of personalities than a meeting of opinionated individuals. Neither students nor faculty were inclined to suffer fools and lily-livered wilting flowers in a place where personal safety was routinely disregarded: it sounded in Ada’s words like risk and stress were deliberately encouraged to reveal robustness and resilience. Debates were intense and conflicted and left the contenders battered and bruised but defiant. This is how I saw Ada: battered, bruised, melancholy, sometimes beaten, but always feisty, always defiant and with an indomitable voice. With her clients she showed unwavering care and a personal honesty that touched me deeply.
The supervision group lasted for about a year and then dwindled to the point where only Ada and I carried on meeting every month. We still discussed clients whenever we felt the need, we talked about methods and models, she opened up new therapeutic avenues for me, but more importantly perhaps, we discovered another common ground to inhabit together: we loved to write and found in each other a ready audience and a gentle critique. Together we created a space of freedom and desire where only we visited: we could admit to our passion and our ambition without fear of mockery or derision. Her writing was as fierce and honest as she was. It was always poignant, thought provoking and punchy, but also darkly funny. My greatest regret is that so few got to read it.
What she called our “strange relationship” ended too soon in October 2023 when Ada died of re-occurring breast cancer. She was my best friend. She may not have known it. To me she will always be an exemplar of the Hiroshima Ginkgo Survivor Trees she often referred to and of the spirit of psychotherapy the Minster Centre champions: human, unique, struggling with the mess within and without and trying her very best to overthrow burdens and overcome wounds to reveal the gold out of the darkness.
