back to winter 2025 newsletter 
by Ursula Jorgensen, ATR-BC, LMFT

January is sometimes joked about as the month to make promises to the self and promptly break those same promises in the first two weeks. So it always felt fitting to have February be a “Month of Compassion” – a chance to forgive our imperfections, see the world through rose-colored glasses yet without self-judgment, and a time to be with those we cherish or feel loved by.

Somehow this proposition seems to be falling short nowadays! I was so thankful to attend one of our first chapter workshop events, IFS Yoga, with Jaclyn Long and LaDonna Silva. This gave me a chance to slow down, breathe, and be present. Not just in my head, but in my heart and body as well. To talk to my tired joints, my racing heart, my mom belly and say ‘I love you just as you are for you make this beautiful, messy, complicated life possible.’

Lately, I find myself looking forward to more chapter events and knowing that beyond my concern for clients and recent disasters like the LA wildfires, injustices, and the rapidly changing world, that I have a community that welcomes me, affirms me, holds me, and keeps me accountable from living too far in the past or too far into a future that I have no way to accurately predict.

In case you need that reassurance of community, please read one of my favorite poems by Alberto Rios. Know that you are welcome. Know that you are among friends and I am honored to be one of them!

We Are of a Tribe
By Alberto Ríos

We plant seeds in the ground
And dreams in the sky,

Hoping that, someday, the roots of one
Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.

It has not happened yet.
We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:

Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,
Even as we stand on uncertain ground.

The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,
Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.

The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,
Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.

The sky is our common home, the place we all live.
There we are in the world together.

The dream of sky requires no passport.
Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.

Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.
Know that you always have a home here.

Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2014 by Alberto Rios, "We Are of a Tribe," from Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, (Grayson Books, 2017).

Ursula Jorgensen
SCV-CAMFT President