“Walk”: A Therapeutic Journey Towards Wild Dreams
Sometime in the summer of 2021, Spotify suggested “Walk” by Griff as a song the algorithm thought I might like. The rest was history. Every year, my Spotify Wrapped report confirms my devotion to this song, and to Griff as an artist. Griff is an artist whose connection to the emotions and stories of her family system pours out in her music. Each song is so filled with love, introspection, and hope even in her most difficult confessionals. There is hope in the insight.
“Walk” tops my list as one of the most loving songs ever written. Just put it on your favorite song streamer and walk with it. It’s so affirming. This song expresses so many things I have to say to friends, family, and certainly my clients.
This song is perfect to bring me back to posting on Therapy Jam Sessions.
It’s been a while since I posted. After a while of not communicating regularly with someone – even invisible blog readers – the pressure starts to form about what you will say when you finally resurface. The longer I waited to post something new on Therapy Jam Sessions, the more I psyched myself out. I share this because I know how relatable this is.
Certainly, life got in the way of writing. The state of the world paused me, too. For the current stressors in our community at large, I am still finding my words. That said, the most artistically honest reason for not posting in so long is that I’ve been trying to write something longer than blogs. It started with giving myself permission in 2024 to just read with no pressure to write.
Permission to just take things in with no written response other than my copious notes on Goodreads was probably one of the best things I’ve done for my creative spirit. It was me saying to myself, “all you gotta do is walk.” I read several books a week and did literature studies with a passion I never had in my college English classes. It was a great time.
My brain was getting quite full by the end of 2024. So, at the beginning of 2025, I followed the trend clients introduced me to. I gave myself just one word as my new year’s resolution: WRITER. I started writing every day in what I eventually started calling my “Sci-Fi” journal.
The imagined audience for journaling carries different vibes and objectives. Some journaling is just for you, and some journaling is a draft of words to eventually share. Journaling just for you is great to vent or vomit out an experience with no need to make sense to anyone but yourself. It’s the mental equivalent of pulling everything out of your closet. You need the pile of things out. You can sort it later.
My “Sci-Fi” journal is a different type of journal than the venting kind. It a disciplined practice to develop skills and endurance for longer forms of writing. If you can guess from its title, it’s turning into a science fiction novel set in a world that is my greatest hope for us all someday.
As I write this, I realize that in many ways this song “Walk” is also about the writing process. The lyric “all the countless times in the dead of the night you were with me when no one else could be,” makes me think of how this story has always been with me. It’s a story I made up to get through difficult times when I was younger. It’s a story that gave me enough faith in humanity to become a therapist. In ways like this, our creative expression can be like a friend to us.
I share all of this to model the pursuit of wild dreams as a grounded practice. For many reasons, there are boundaries for therapists sharing about certain personal struggles, past and present. That said, I don’t assume the same boundaries about my hopes. I assume clients benefit from generally knowing that that therapists believe we can all do amazing things.
