Mary Joye

For the past ten years I have been a private practice Licensed Mental Health Counselor. I'm a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional and a Florida Supreme Court Family Mediator. Grief resilience and trauma resolution is a large part of my practice. I was raised on the beach in Florida. My father was a psychiatrist and I worked in his office in my youth. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps. Instead, I chose to become a theatrical design major instead and graduated from the University of Florida in 1979. My first job out of college, KISS employed me as a make-up and wardrobe assistant for three years. It was quite an experience and a good background to study communications. Later in Nashville, I began songwriting, acting and performing professionally and am a member of BMI, ASCAP and a former member of the Country Music Association, Screen Actors Guild and The American Federation of Musicians. That career grew into a 20-year music ministry. I also wrote ad copy for XM radio, Texaco, The Filmhouse and currently write for two publications in Winter Haven, Florida, where I returned to take care of my ill and now deceased parents. I earned an MA in Counseling from Trevecca Nazarene University in 2000. (Photo by Daniel DeCastro)

Articles:

Grief Counseling: 7 Reasons to Seek Support

    “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  (C.S. Lewis) If you keep the proverbial “stiff upper lip” for too long, you may impair your ability to learn to smile again. It’s okay not to be okay. It’s good to cry. Pain is not meant to be contained for too long in the body, mind or spirit. Suffering seeks relief and release. You and only you can know if you need to talk to someone […]

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The Myth of the 5 Stages of Grief

As a mental-health counselor and a sixty-something-year-old human being, I have found that you cannot fit grief into a neat list of stages on some linear continuum.  The so-called five stages of grief actually are a myth. Grief doesn’t come in stages, but in cycles. These cycles may come in waves like a gently rolling incoming tide of memories, or like a consuming tsunami of pain that can’t be stopped. And there are way more than five stages and phases of grief. There are infinite ways grief comes and goes. No one’s pain can fit neatly into a check list. […]

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This Valentine’s Day, Turn Your Loss into Valuing Yourself

  You may have been through a gauntlet of grief with your spouse or partner. Then along comes Valentine’s Day and it’s another hurdle. It’s hard to pick yourself up. Reframing this memory of being loved won’t be easy. It takes bravery and fortitude to find gratitude. The loss of that perfect someone you loved and still love may linger. You may or may not find someone again, but you can get past the pain and fearlessly look for love. Even if it is not the romantic kind, love is everywhere. if you are brave enough to you transform your […]

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No One Should Grieve Alone

You’re here for self-help. But the best help is in person. Some of you have come here in abject grief, thinking life is unfair. It is unfair, as we all know, but when it is not fair to you, you need someone to help you understand what to do about it. What do you do with all this pain? Share it with a professional. In doing so, you are releasing some of the burden to another who can give you hope and perspective. Albert Einstein once said you cannot solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it. I hung […]

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