Quinoa Confetti Salad
Serves 10
Blog
Why We Keep Making Outside Magazine's Top 100 Jobs List
When asked to offer my perspective on the company I work for, Evoke at Entrada, in relation to its recognition in Outside Magazine’s top 100 list, a very simple thing hit me: I noticed that I address the company as ‘we’. “Why we made Outside Magazine’s top 100 best job list?”. “I’d love to write a blog post about us.” That’s right, over the last three and a half years that I’ve been a Field Instructor I have felt included in the company as an integral part of its functioning. From our newest field staff to the Program Director, there is a feeling of inclusion and care. There are what I consider the basics of care for a company; an appropriate wage, support with health care, proper working conditions and support, etc. Evoke has gone beyond what I expected. The following, I believe, are some of the reasons that for the last three years we have made Outside Magazine’s top 100 list for best places to work.
Golden Curry
Serves 10
Tomato Coconut Curry
Serves 10
Adzuki Bean Stir Fry
Recipe Serves 8
Meeting Resistance with Compassion
A tool I find myself teaching almost every parent I work with is to LAV on their children. LAV stands for Listen-Acknowledge-Validate. So often with the people we love most, we skip these three key steps and charge head first into fixing and finding a solution. I too am guilty of this both as a therapist and as a human. By skipping these three steps we often set ourselves up for what feels like resistance from the other person. But can you blame them? Two of our most basic human needs include feeling connected and understood. I personally do not feel either when someone swoops in and tells me how to fix my problem, how to be better. In fact in that moment I feel like the underlying message is “you are broken, you’re not good enough.” I may eventually want to brainstorm and figure out a solution but first I really just want to be heard, seen, listened to.
Some Things I Learned In The Wilderness
For years I based my life on external validation and thought that my purpose was to make everyone around me happy. It was not until after my parents split up, and I came out of a very intense depression that I realized how important self-validation is and how to manage where I put my energy.
A Mom's Struggle With Absence
I want to share some of my struggles during the three months that my son attended Wilderness in Utah. I am hopeful that writing about my experience, and the tools I utilized for coping will help at least one parent. My purpose is simply to offer you the knowledge that you are not alone. That there is healing in camaraderie.
The Value of Discomfort
It's a Wednesday afternoon and I'm already late to our weekly yoga class. Much like other people, I have tried to fit too many things into a short amount of time. After hosting a staff breakfast at my house I had decided to schedule a pest control appointment during a 10 minute window, I only sort of had, before I needed to head to yoga. You can imagine my added stress and frustration when the employee arrived late to my house. I hustled him as quickly as I could and rushed over to participate in yoga. We provide this class for our employees every Wednesday as an opportunity for them to engage in their own practice of health and wellness and bring that back into the field. After struggling to find where I needed to be, I wandered into class late and was warmly welcomed by our Health and Wellness Coordinator, Elise Mitchell, who has a phenomenal ability to incorporate inconveniences and distractions into her yoga and mindfulness classes.
Wilderness Therapy Is Making Insurance Headway
Last week I received another call from a law office looking for background information about Evoke’s Wilderness Therapy Program. She let me know her client, a previous parent of our program, was bringing a suit against their family’s insurance company. As I got off the phone I noted this case would make 7 current cases I’m aware of just this year, and 3 more already settled in favor of the families. Wilderness Therapy is making significant headway in getting families insurance coverage.