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Peace COMES FROM WITHIN.

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Hello, that is me in the white blouse standing beside the bronze statue of Albert Einstein seated with manuscript papers in hand. It is located in central Washington, D.C.  I have traveled extensively throughout the United States visiting forty states.  I hope some day to travel throughout the world.  One of my desires is for the soles of my feet to be placed on the soils of many countries.

 
 "Peace cannot be kept by force. 
It can only be achieved by understanding."
 
"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest is details."
         -Albert Einstein
 

I am a native of Mississippi who, by way of Alabama, traveled to New York and New Jersey in "culture shock" to complete my Master's of Science degree in Clinical Social Work from Columbia University in New York City. I received my Bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I was the 1987 recipient of the John Fraser Ramsey Award.  http://premierawards.ua.edu/ramsey.cfm  The John Fraser Ramsey Award is one of six University of Alabama Premier Awards, the highest honors given at the Capstone.  This award honors one junior (a member of the next academic year's graduating class) with broad humanistic interests who has exerted a positive influence on his or her contemporaries and who has achieved a 3.3 or higher grade point average on a 4.0 scale.  The Ramsey Award honors a distinctive kind of excellence. It is not merely a service, leadership, or academic award, although recipients have - by their contributions to the University, their spirit of cooperation, and their academic achievements - demonstrated their abilities in these areas. Rather, the Ramsey Award is intended to recognize the versatility of gifts and attainments, as well as the breadth of excellence in mind and character, that have traditionally been the goals of a liberal education.  I also was a member of the University of Alabama's Alpha Lambda Delta, Phi Eta Sigma, and Phi Alpha Honor societies.

I have been in private practice since February 1992 serving hundreds of individuals and families. I am licensed by the State Board of Social Work Examiners for Clinical Social Work Practice (LCSW). My specialties are counseling/psychotherapy, marriage counseling, divorce and custody mediation including best interest evaluations, parenting education, and management consulting of family businesses.  Central and continual is my desire to see families succeed. I believe that the key to the future of families lies with the education of children and youth, education that can be translated into real life. 

Academic learning, emotional development, and character development are synonymous.  Each step toward intellectual development must be taken in parallel with character and emotional development, if we are to make the right choices.  We are volitional beings whose behavior is guided by feelings, for better or worse.  When our feelings dominate, we lose our ability to think about the possibilities and consequences of our choices.  Conversely, when we use only our cognitive ability, we become cold and calculating.  It is imperative that we are guided by a thought process that is in balance, both thoughts and feelings.  This thought process must be driven by a impermeable moral code, lest our thoughts and behaviors run amuck. 
 
If you were to ask me what experience shaped my life, values, and personality the most, I would say growing up on a farm near a small rural town. I learned to be an early riser and hard worker.  My excellent physical health is attributed largely to the fresh vegetables from our garden, the fruit from our orchard and the no-hormone meat that provided our protein.  We raised all of our food including grinding corn for cornmeal and growing cane to make syrup. After a hard day’s work, we would go swimming in Black Creek that flowed icy cold at the back of our property. There are many life’s principles that I learned on a farm, especially gardening. Patience and faith are the keys to successful gardening. Patience meaning you cannot grow something faster than it can grow; and, faith believing that if you plant properly, cultivate, weed, fertilize, and water in due season, you will harvest keeping in mind the principle feast and famine.  I learned the principle of “Sleep, Creep, and Leap." Ask me about this principle when we meet.  It is applicable to our lives in so many ways.   When I grew up, farmers were among the toughest, smartest, and thriftiest people in the nation.   My dad was the authoritarian and my mom was the heart and spirit of our home.
 
"If you have never worked from sun up until sun down on a farm, it may sound like a terrible way to live, but then you would not know how grand it is to sit down to eat when everything taste good, and to go to bed at 8:00 so tired it seems like midnight, and to wake up at sunrise feeling so healthy that everything in the world is beautiful to see."  -Author Unknown
  
Beyond farming, education was the next emphasis with straight A’s being the only acceptable report card.   I developed my avid eclectic reading enjoyment by checking out books from the bookmobile that came once a month and parked under our pecan trees.   All the neighbors came to our farm to get their month’s supply of books. Reading was the substitute for television, as we were never allowed to have a television in our home. Books opened a whole world beyond our farm in south Mississippi.  I received the best education in the country.  I attended Forrest County Agricultural High School, the only boarding agricultural high school in the United States. My teachers were the best.  They all lived in the community and attended the local churches. I learned to love Shakespeare from my senior English teacher, Mr. Phillips, who could read Shakespeare as eloquently as Richard Burton.  
 
Although I thoroughly enjoy being around people, I truly am a solitary person with a serious philosophical approach to life. I am a bibliophile who is committed deeply to learning. I enjoy building my library with history books, especially books about Abraham Lincoln; biographies and autobiographies; philosophy; war and business strategies; and literature, particularly Emerson and Thoreau and other 19th century authors. I am an avid reader and studier of the Bible and comparative religions. My other equally important interests are gardening, playing the piano, and enjoying time with my family and friends. I am blessed beyond anything that I could have imagined for myself.    Thank you for taking the time to get to know a little about me.  I am looking forward to getting to know you sometime in the near future. 
 
  
 
 
"I cannot change myself. 
However, the choices I make change me."
-Elane Lee-Isa
  
The name Elane is of Greek origin, and the meaning of Elane is
"sunray, shining light."

 

"We choose and life changes. 
We choose and we are forgotten;
We choose and we stay where we are or we choose; 

Or, we choose and we are remembered.  
And, go on to something bigger, better, and greater. 
Our lives are in our hands for better or for worse, 
For greater or for lesser." 

-Author Unknown  

 

  
 
 
 
 
"What is this faithful process of spirit and seed that touches empty ground and makes it rich again? 
Its greater workings I cannot claim to understand. 
I only know that in its care, what has seemed dead is dead no longer; 
What has seemed lost, is no longer lost; 
That which some have claimed impossible, is made clearly possible;
And what ground is fallow is only resting-resting and waiting for the blessed seed to arrive on the wind with all Godspeed." 
 
 "And it will!"
 
 "Faithful Gardener"
 by
 Clarissa Pin Estes
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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