Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my new website and thank you for coming to say “hello”. 

My name is Celia.  I’m an English psychologist currently working in a psychiatric facility in America to help troubled teenagers.  I’m looking forward to building a community where we can learn from each other to help those who hurt, no matter what age they are.  My career has been to help teenagers and I’ve worked with them for decades, plus, all five of my children were once teenagers! 

I failed miserably at school, being severely dyslexic, which wasn’t even recognized when I was a child, but after being a mother of three girls I realized that I knew  absolutely nothing except how to knit and sew, and my cooking wasn’t dreadful!

I enrolled in night school and began to educate myself.   I now know that education doesn’t occur when you’re consumed with anxiety about going home.

I decided to go for the subject English first, but almost walked out when I just couldn’t describe what a noun was.  But as I listened to each member of the class give an example, I “heard” my mother’s voice, who constantly corrected my speech as a child, and so I knew the answers, even though I had absolutely no idea what the definition of grammar was.  I owe my success to my mother because she said, “When you need to take a breath, write in a comma.”

I am still learning grammar, and the rules of written English, mainly through the proofreading and corrections made throughout my writing career, and at times I still get confused and get things wrong.  I see it as a lifelong English lesson, one that will never stop until I die, and I’m grateful for it.  Please, if you find a mistake in any of my books, let me know!

Little Rock on the Arkansas River

My career started as a Registered Nurse and I longed to work with children but I lived on the Isle of Wight, a small island off the south of mainland Britain.  There is only one hospital on the island and rarely any vacancies on the children’s ward, so I bravely accepted a position at Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

Blundell's School Devon UK

After a year I returned to the U.K. because the gang problem was worsening and I was afraid for my children.  I then became a Matron of a 400 year old boarding school, and taught teenagers psychology.  After remarrying I moved to Winchester and then became an Educational Welfare Officer attempting to help children stay in school.  I did home visits in my own time to work with the dynamics within the family.

I then joined the Probation service to work with young offenders, either on probation in the community or locked up in Youth Offender Units.  I just knew that this was my life’s mission, and the University of Portsmouth invited  me to take my studies of teenage suicide attempts to a PhD level in order to find a risk assessment scale, because too many teenagers were left unidentified using the current methods of that time.

Since then, I guess I’ve lived a double life; I work in America, and go home to see all my family often, especially since a second batch of grandbabies arrived.  It’s not easy, but I’m on a mission to change hurt people’s lives.

I am a “colourful” character and wear my heart on my sleeve, and although I earned a Masters in social work and psychotherapy, and then a PhD in Suicidology I am still that little girl loving the power of stories, but now I have a ferocious yearning for knowledge to help all those who hurt, from teenagers to the elderly.

I seek to find truth and peace for myself and for everyone else.  I hope you’ll join me in this journey and add your knowledge and ideas to help me on this ongoing mission.

Thank you for listening!!   And welcome to my beautiful website!!  X