The Growing Place - Center For Helping People - Counseling, Coaching & Education - The Growing Place - Center For Helping People - Counseling, Coaching & Education

   Judy has spent the last 50 years as a businesswoman. She started her first business with a partner at the age of 21. Seven years later she and her husband purchased and ran a resort in Northern Wisconsin for eight years.  Following the sale of the resort they moved to the Chicago area then purchased and ran a businessman’s luncheon club in the Chicago loop, two blocks from the Sears Tower. They eventually were guided by God to move to California and began doing management in the city of Chico.  Judy has always loved people and had a heart to encourage and empower them. Almost every business she has ever done has had some component of personal service.  She has always enjoyed working with people, managing employees, mentoring women, and encouraging people to be all they can be.  Throughout those years she invested in various businesses.  She had no idea that therapy would be what God called her to, but she knows now that she’s exactly where God wants her to be.  In the book Passages by Gayle Sheehy, it is stated that over one million women, approximately Judy’s age at that time, went back to college in 1991. Judy went back herself in 1990 at the age of 50. After her youngest son, age 17, was killed in an accident in town and she was lost.  Nothing interested her.  When her husband asked her what it was she had always wanted to do, it was to go to school.  She’d never really had the opportunity. She began junior college, joined their honors program and then went to Chico State University completing her B.S. and M.S. there. She is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi and Golden Key Honor Societies.  After completing her degrees she returned to the church where she had volunteered doing 14 years of prison ministry with women, and worked through her intern hours with a wonderful supervisor and others. While completing her licensing she was on the board of directors for the House of Mercy, a recovery program for women coming out of prison.  She developed a program for them to gain the skills needed to be productive members of society.  Upon licensing she made a decision to go into private practice.  Her first day in her office was her 65^th birthday.  After that God led her to go back to the church where she had started, to rebuild the counseling center, which had nearly disintegrated by that time. She had been the last one there and God said, “Build it,” and that’s what she’s been doing over the last five years.  Judy has taught Biblical Lay Counseling classes to those who have wanted to work at the counseling center or who have wanted to use it in their own ministries or in their own lives.  In providing the training for lay counselors she discovered how much she enjoys teaching. She has had five interns under her supervision, two of which are now licensed.  In looking at supervision of young women in these licensing positions it is said that the key feature is relationship with their supervisor and Judy believes they achieve that relationship and that she loves them well.  She provides what they need to be successful and that is really exciting for her.  In looking forward to her 71^st birthday this year she realizes that she is not done. There is a feeling that there is a whole lot more that God wants from her. Running a full schedule private practice, supervising the lay counselors and interns, and teaching classes at the counseling center lets her know that she is ministering as well as she knows how and is doing what she believes God wants.  Judy believes that when a person knows they are doing what is right for them, there is a peace with that, and she has that peace. She knows that this is exactly where God has headed her all her life and it took her to age 50 to go to school to achieve this goal.  Judy is able to do this crucial work that she is passionate about while feeling so comfortable in her office with people that it is like being home.  She knows it is exactly where she belongs, doing exactly what God wants. It is a really incredible feeling.  Looking toward the future, she is not exactly sure what will occur. She is planning to continue supervising the remaining interns through to licensing and believes that she’ll continue to be involved in the growth and expansion of The Growing Place Counseling Center. Judy is thankful for this opportunity to share her heart. People are her passion and have been all the days of her life. She loves people and never tires of that. It is a good thing.