When I come up to Washington each spring, one of my favorite pastimes is watching TV in English. In Mexico I make a point of watching in Spanish. I also find myself binge watching certain series with my friend Linda. Seeing as there has been no Virgin River or Lincoln Lawyer this year, we’ve watched Eric and My So Called Life.

I’m also watching one series on my own. Desperate Housewives brings back a lot of memories when on Sunday nights my kids and I used to watch it together. Once I moved to Mexico I never did catch up on the remaining seasons so I decided to do that now.

I’m in Season 7 now. This morning’s episode was when Gabrielle confronted her past. At first she fought the therapy sessions. But then she realized that the only way to move on with her life was to deal with the demons in her past. The big one was sexual abuse by her stepfather.

And that brought me back to my counseling days. One of the first people I ever counseled was a young woman dealing with sexual abuse. It took her years to finally be brave enough to come forward and admit the abuse. And as a counselor, I’m certain that I was only the first of professionals to come who would help her along the journey to healing.

In the very first counseling class I ever took, our instructor gave us a rather interesting first assignment. We were told to find a therapist; the idea being that if we had never been on the client side of that desk then we would never succeed on the counselor side. By a show of hands, I also recall that in that classroom of more than twenty students, only three of us admitted that we had previously been in therapy. Also noteworthy is that the following week, the class had greatly diminished in size. While there were more than three students, there were far fewer than twenty.

Back to Desperate Housewives and Gabrielle. This episode got me thinking of my own past. No. I never experienced sexual abuse. But I have sat on the client side of that desk and I know how difficult it is to look back at your childhood and realize that it was far from idyllic. Truthfully, the presence of both a mother and a father in the home does not necessarily make a family functional; indeed it can be quite the opposite.

I may be retired but I can still offer advice. Be open to suggestions. Embrace change. Take risks. We only get one crazy ride on the roller coaster of life.