Meeting the Challenge of the Times

Beverley Shrumm, MC, LMHC, Executive Director

When I try to recall when various things happened over the past two years, I have the most challenging time. Perhaps you share that experience. I remember where I was on March 10, 2020 with clarity. Our clinical director, Matt Percy, was reviewing the structure, ethics and procedures of the practice of teletherapy with our staff. Talk about the mystery of timing and grace!

The next day, one of our colleagues was diagnosed with Covid-19, and everything changed. In the subsequent weeks, we worked to make the needed shifts in how we provide counseling services. We developed new administrative practices. We learned how to gather virtually to sustain the sense of community that is such an important dynamic of our work together. While I remember the efforts that we made to provide care in this radically changed environment, it’s as if the days, weeks and months are a blur. 2020 and 2021 were one long age.

That said, I think it’s important to acknowledge that there have been significant accomplishments along the way. In each of these two years, Samaritan provided approximately 19,000 hours of psychotherapy and psychological assessment, serving about 500 adults and youth each week. We continued our training and consultation with these wonderfully resilient colleagues: Dr. Jeffrey Sung, our consulting psychiatrist; Eric Strom, JD, PhD, in law and ethics; Jim Furrow, PhD, in working with couples and families; Bill Collins, PhD, LMFT, focusing on Internal Family Systems; and Larry Carlson, MSW, working within a psychodynamic frame.

We are taking forward our embrace of the Danielsen Institute’s SERT model of the integration of the spiritual, existential, religious and theological aspects of providing faith integrative therapy. We’ve experienced something of “the great resignation” as several of our senior therapists are retiring. We have also welcomed five new therapists and five administrative staff members. Virtual counseling sessions are not the same as meeting in person, and there is a sense of loss in that for both client and therapist. At the same time, we have been able to extend our psychotherapy services to many people who would not be able come to one of our offices.

Rev. Lee Seese, our board chair, recently introduced us to Walter Brueggemann’s book, Spirituality of the Psalms, in which he writes about the process of transformation. We are in the phase  he describes as “disorientation” where, both individually and collectively, we experience incoherence, loss of balance, fear,
anger, grief, weariness. Rev. Brueggemann writes that it is necessary to go through a period of disorientation in order to move to a new orientation. On most days, I find that I think about matters of faith — what I believe — as if in a foundational way. I experience love, gratitude and hope, and I hold in my heart the contradictions. While we don’t yet know enough to create a fully realized pathway for the future, we know that we are guided by our mission and our values. We are meant to be an expression of God’s compassion. I hold to what we cannot see or know, to Mystery, beyond the tragedies and blessings of this life.

Beverley Shrumm has been Executive Director of Samaritan since 2000 and was our Clinical Director for three years previously. She has been in leadership roles in the Pacific Northwest mental health community for more than 25 years. Beverley is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, providing care for individuals and couples.