Meet Wendy Olson | Executive Director & Healing Coach

We had the good fortune of connecting with Wendy Olson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Wendy, what do you want people to remember about you?
Ironically enough, I am an enneagram two: The Helper. I SHOULD say that what I want people to remember about me is that I helped them with something. But alas, I will not.

As someone who has spent most of her life helping people with something one way or another, whether through favors, advice, or just showing up as a good friend, I think the thing I want people to most remember about me is the way I made them feel. When they felt unseen, did I make them feel seen? When they felt like no one was listening, did I make them feel heard? When they felt completely misunderstood by everyone around them, did I make them feel like I understood them, like I knew where they were coming from, even just for a moment?

This is probably why I chose the profession I did. As a healing coach, I want people to find healing for themselves. I want to point to a road, or a couple of roads, but let them blaze their own path. As someone who is in school to completely their LCSW to become a licensed therapist, I don’t think my objectives will change much. I still want to be a good listener. I strive to be someone people can trust. I don’t need to be someone people can always count on. That sort of life only sets me up to be tired all of the time. But I can be someone they know is true, authentic, and trustworthy. That I can handle.

Too many times people will try to be everything to everybody. And that’s just not reality. I can be everything to everybody inside my home, but that makes me a terrible friend and coworker. I can be everything to everybody at work, but that makes me a terrible partner, spouse, mother, and friend. There’s just no way around it. I can’t be everything. Letting that go and being able to accept that I am just me and I can only ever be all of me TO me has been the journey of my late thirties and forties.

So yes, while I want people to remember me and I want to leave a legacy behind, I don’t want it to be for all the things I did for them, but for how I made them feel. Was I there to see them when they felt like just another invisible mom in the neighborhood? When they expressed their most vulnerable thoughts at a random meeting in a museum lobby, did I authentically meet them there and say, ‘Yeah, I totally get it’…and mean it? These are the ways that I am showing up in the world as someone in her 40s who realizes it’s not all about my accomplishments, my successes, or my bank statements. It’s about people. It’s about one person at a time, feeling seen, feeling known, feeling heard.

As the famous saying goes, ‘Want to change the world? Start with one.’

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I have always been someone that other people have come to for advice. Don’t ask me why! I’m 43 years old and I still often feel like I don’t have my life together, so why did they think at 12 I had anything to offer them.

When I started college at 18, I was studying psychology with full intent on becoming a child psychologist. I had met one in my early years when my mother was trying to figure out what was “wrong with me.” Turns out I was just a kid with a sachet full of trauma, but that’s neither here nor there. I was fascinated by this man’s work. He told me to draw a picture and named a few elements I needed to include in it. Afterwards he broke down my inner most thoughts with such ease I figured he must be a magician. Or really smart. Either way, I was interested. What made him so smart that he had people coming to him for advice all the time? I needed to know more.

Unintentionally, I had become everyone’s therapist through middle school and high school. I guess I cared more about other peoples’ problems more than my own, something I’m still working on these days. While at university, two very important things happened. The first being a man at the bar I waitressed at told me that people go to school for psychology for one of two reasons, one being to find out what’s wrong with them. I paused and realized I wasn’t trying to find out what was wrong with me. I wanted to find out what was wrong with my primary caregiver. And the second being a severely traumatic event that would completely derail my life well into my 30s. I ended up having to leave school and wasn’t able to return to finish my degree, despise many side attempts to do so.

In my 30s, I began a complex trauma and PTSD therapy called EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. This coupled with Story Work, an Allender Center Modality, I was well on my way to finding my true path back to the life I had left behind, and honestly forgotten about. It has only been in the last year that I’ve been able to name the ways I wanted to recoup some of the trauma I endured at 18, 20, 24, and 27, and finish what I started. So, at 43, I’m finally going back to school to finish out my last two years of my psychology degree. To me, this has a redemptive quality, one that says what you took from me, I will now reclaim.

If you take nothing from this story but this, I will consider it a success: You will absolutely fail, fall flat on your you-know-what, but DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT let that failure, that trauma, that slight have the last word. There is always time to reclaim what is rightfully yours. There was a “you” before the trauma and there will be a “you” after. But do not forget who you were before all of that trauma happened to you. And if you do, therapy is helpful and there are people who want to help you find that person again. She/He/They are out there. It just takes a lot of work to find them again. But know this: it is never too late.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
We just moved to the Durham area in December of last year, and anytime anyone comes to visit us from out of state, we take them to Duke University and Duke Gardens. (We also take them to Alpaca, but that’s just good sense!) There is something about the campus of Duke University and especially Duke Chapel that is sacred. It is the life-blood of the city. It is the place where amazing things happen, good conversation starts, and it feels like you’re a part of something that is big, even if you don’t understand why.

We also love walking around Duke Gardens. Again, there’s something electric in the air there, something that says and displays that new life is possible. It’s breathtaking.

Ok, I have a little story that goes with this. (I’m a storyteller. I can’t help it.)
When we were thinking of moving to Durham, we visited the Duke campus. My husband and my daughter and I walked and wandered around. It had truly hit me in that moment that moving here would be a whole different way of life neither of us imagined. When I stopped outside the Duke Chapel on the way back to the book store, I got to the bottom of the stairs and there on an electrical box was a sticker that said, “You are right where you are meant to be.” I took a picture of it. It’s still on my phone. I knew right then and there, this is where we needed to be.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’d love to give a shoutout to my organization, Grit Plus Gumption, and all the women who make that wheel turn. To all the women we’ve served as clients who have given me so much life just by being in their presence. To all the women who serve on our board and advisory board. To all the donors who believe in our work: somehow we’ve turned five loaves into a feast for five thousand way more times than I can count.
I am so appreciative of all the women in my life who empower me, show up for me, and kick my butt when I need it. Thank you!

Website: https://Www.shesgotgumption.com

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Image Credits
Photographer: Eric Clement