How Going Inside and Being Playful Can Lead Us to Heal

I spoke with Mora MacDonald Aug 16, 2019. She shared with us the value of Play Therapy and how she works with it with kids at her school. She also gives insights into how things we have been doing for years have purpose and give us tools to heal. She also talks about how intuition can help set boundaries and help us take care of ourselves. 

Mora's Bio
At heart, Mora is a community builder offering compassion in creating spaces of hope, inclusivity, and care. She is also a seeker yearning to understand and the universe and its creatures which include herself. A fierce mother, a loyal friend, a round peg in a square hole, a dog lover, stargazer, a pie maker, a road tripper, a risk-taker, a play therapist, and a passionate defender of small towns. 
 Currently, she is employed as the full-time school counsellor at Salem Elementary in Sackville, NB, where she supports children and their families with their social, emotional and behavioural concerns. 
 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to See'rs, be-ers, knowers and doers, a podcast about intuition. Do you know what that is? Intuition to me is that inner sense for knowing that something is true and yet I have no proof, but there's so many definitions and there's so many ways it can come and give you to bring together and share with you some amazing guests who have some amazing life stories and also some insights into how intuition can come and I'm looking to gather those crows in the trees. I hope you're one of them. I hope that this podcast inspires you to be more connected to your intuition and I hope that by doing that we make the world a better place. Thanks for coming on this journey with me.

Heather: 0:52

My guest today is a community builder. She offers compassion and creating a space of hope, inclusivity, and care. She's also a learner. She's a fierce mother, a loyal friend a round peg in a square hole. She's a dog lover, a star gazer, a road tripper and risk taker. She's a play therapist and a passionate defender of small towns. She is somebody who supports kids and their families with their social, emotional and behavioral concerns. My guest today is Mora MacDonald. We've known each other for a while now and every time we get together we just have no problem talking. So it's going to be fun today. Thanks Mora for joining us.

Mora: 1:39

Well, thank you so much for asking me, Heather. I'm really excited to do this with you.

Heather: 1:43

Great. Now tell us a little bit about yourself, Mora.

Mora: 1:47

Well, Heather, getting to that point in my life that this could take all of your time. My name is Mora and I grew up in Cape Breton. I came to Mount Alison to go to school and loved it and I got my BA B ED there. Went away and taught for a couple of years and got a master's degree in counseling while I was away. And then uh, and did a bunch of different things and teaching and Aboriginal communities and counseling and then a job at Mount Alison and a Dean of students office called me and I knew that was my job and I just went after it and I got landed. That's up in 2001 and I've been in Sackville ever since then. I got married and had two kids and their dad and I are not no longer together, but we have two great kids and co-parent very well together and I'm working with Anglophone East school district. I'm a school counselor at Salem in fact.

Heather: 2:43

Cool. So that's elementary school, right?

Mora: 2:45

Yeah, it's a K to fourth school.

Heather: 2:47

Right. Okay. Which is kinda neat cause you don't see many of the small schools anymore.

Mora: 2:53

No, there's mostly K to eight and it's really interesting for me because I bounced, when I came back to Sackville I was working with university students at Mount Allison and I had worked with high school and junior high school students before that. And then when it came to district they went as a high school counselor and then I moved to K to eight. So I've been working with all kinds of age groups. But the K to four t hey're my favorite.

Heather: 3:18

Yes. What just brings me to tell us a little bit about your latest passion, cause I just learned you were doing this probably in the last year or so, maybe a little longer than that. Play therapy. Like how much fun is that?

Mora: 3:35

Well I, as I said, I came to work with these little people and you know, well Heather, when I say therapy, what do you think of?

Heather: 3:44

Well you typically think of sitting them in a chair and making them talk.

Mora: 3:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you think that goes with a five year old? You know, they will, they could talk about anything. They might talk about nothing because you're a stranger and they don't know you. I was finding when I first met with them, because I was moving to school, to school, because at that time we weren't full time at many elementary schools. Principal say, well, I want you to talk about this situation that happened at home or on the playground yesterday, last week, and then I would have the students sit in front of me and they'd say, Oh, there's no problem there. Everything's fine. Everything's made up. But I don't know what you're talking about. They wouldn't remember. So the talk therapy was like this isn't working. And then it was like, okay, let's try some CBT, you know? And a lot of that is thinking about your thinking or giving homework sheets and writing things down and they can't read when they're five months. This isn't working. So I was like there has to be something that is more respectful to children and more helpful to children then this talk therapy. So I did some searching and I stumbled across this thing called play therapy. So I guess it was, it's a 10 years ago now. I went and did an introduction to one specific type of play therapy 10 years ago called therapy play. And it is about playing with children. Those games that we used to play in the school yard or our parents play with us when we were children. Just natural games that creates connection to children and help them with some of their difficult things that they might be dealing with. And I, after I went to that course and started using it, when I came back, I was hot and I could see the changes, not only in the children I worked with, but with my own little guy. I was doing many of those things with him because he seemed to be struggling socially and it just transformed him. So I was sold. So I've been dabbling in the play therapy ever since.

Heather: 5:49

So it's more about creating the connection, and then the conversation can happen organically. Is that how it works?

Mora: 5:56

Well, I think I would say that play, that's a really good question, Heather. I think play therapists come for them stance that believing that children have everything inside them, that they need to heal, that they have the tools to heal, to grow, to problem solve. They just need a way to explore that. So how do children explore? How do children learn how they express themselves through play? Right. Especially with that, different ways of looking at that play could be non-directive as an Atol leads to clay and I, the therapists watch them and they're tuned to what they're doing, witnessing, observing at the sizing live with us. They're doing, doing a raw running commentary, kind of like a sportscaster might do of their play. So they know I'm right there with them and we believe that would set up an environment to safety and security. So they feel cared for and safe to be able to express what they need to express. And then there's more direct ways of doing things. So that's when I, the therapist would plan the activities to do with the child. And that might be a sand tray, like a, like a sandbox with little miniatures. They would, I would tell them, create a world, show me the world of your home or the playground. And then it would go to itself and see all these little miniatures. Like maybe lay out Lego man or little Playmobile figures, animals, people, other optics, magical ones are, and they would build them in the sand and show me that world. So they're not, they might be talking, I think doing that, but they're actually showing me too. So that's one way we might use it in a sand tray. Might do that in a water tray. You watch kids play in a doll house or affirm they all reenact things that they've seen and witnessed so you can see what's going on in their lives and in their minds and in their hearts like watching that play.

Heather: 7:53

Right.

Mora: 7:54

And I might intervene in those that there may be, again, a dangerous situation that they playing it over and over again. So I know they're stuck on that kind of play. So I might intervene with, Oh, here comes an ambulance to save that, that family in that car accident scene that they've been showing me many times. And so they might introduce something like helpers of how to problem solve that, you know, or we may be doing other direct playing games. Like I was saying, we may do, um, uh, with babies. You remember how you often say peekaboo,

Heather: 8:28

right? Yes.

Mora: 8:30

Like you're hiding something and you're popping in to see the baby. That's the teach them to follow the leader. You know, you're following the mum, you're following dad, you're following the one who's in charge and that leads to the adults, the caregivers eventually that leads to school, those kinds of things. And they learn how to follow social cues that way that I have to pay attention to other people to what they're doing and how they're feeling as well.

Heather: 8:56

Yeah. And that's just not explained. That's just a game that's been passed down for generations and like the math behind it, it's never been explained.

Mora: 9:05

Absolutely. That's what I liked so much about all of the, many of the techniques that we use. They're all really natural, normal social interactions. The reasons I went into counseling, not psychology was my view. Psychology tends to pathologize people to make them think they're sick. And where is that? I see counseling, well I don't know if these the cousin is really true, but this is how I've seen it anyway. I see counselors more as people that are trying to see people that stuck. They have need some help with something and I can help them with this one thing. And then they get back to their life. You know, cause I think we all have our things to deal with, but we need help with along the way to help us with those things.

Heather: 9:44

Right. Get unstuck is as a common theme between the two of us.

Speaker 3: 9:51

Yeah.

Heather: 9:51

Very cool. So it landed on your radar screen 10 years ago, just in a passing conversation or how did, how did

Mora: 10:01

I just, I just knew everyone when I was meeting with these were the people that this talk therapy wasn't working. There has to be a better way to do this or respectful and helpful way to help children than just talking at them is what it felt like. And then when I started integrating play more into what I'm doing, it helps hugely from even like, Oh, paint a picture for me, you know, that can tell me a whole lot about what's going on with their life or let's play this game of checkers, you know, how well do they take turns? How well do they lose? How frustrated did they get when I start winning? Not all the time. Very often, you know? How did you know, how does that all go? And even if we're having a conversation, but it's something else, it goes better when we're playing a game. Then just sitting face straight on face to face.

Heather: 10:51

Yes. I broke out the crayons in my office too and it's like, can you draw me the weather based on how you're feeling or

Mora: 10:59

Ooh, you're doing play therapy too.

Heather: 11:01

Didn't even know. Didn't even know. I think part of me wants to play. So I think,

Mora: 11:08

well you know it's interesting in in the training that we do to be played there, but in the final level this year, the first time ever they've introduced play therapy with adults because we are learning that adults need to play to every age group needs to play and it's a very expressive way to say what's going on and a less intimidating way. Share that with people. So it is happening. We're getting to more core issues that way. Yes,

Heather: 11:37

I'm a hundred percent behind that cause I think everybody's got this inner child that's sometimes has some bumps and bruises that never got attended to. And so nurturing that inner child by incorporating play or just doing things you like to do when you're a kid, um, I think can be very healing. So I'm glad the play therapist are on the, on the same track as me then. That's good.

Mora: 11:59

Yeah. Yeah. Well even seniors, this certain kind of play therapy called thera play, that's all of the touch. Seniors don't get touched enough, so they're studying to do play thera play with seniors. So they do get touched and they're falling. That is like you say, bringing healing to them and reminding them of their whole person. Pretty incredible. The field is really growing in those ways.

Heather: 12:24

Lovely. Well thank you for sharing all that with us because I don't think it's on enough people's radar as innate as it is. Like it's very innate, but busy-ness takes us away from it or protocol takes us away from it. So I think getting us back to what we do innately or intuitively is, is amazing. So thanks for sharing and explaining with us.

Mora: 12:48

I think our society's become so structured, you know, that we even have to structure play that it gets hard. Yeah. So we need more opportunities to do those things. Yes. Thank you, my pleasure. Glad to talk about it.

Heather: 13:00

Yeah. Well this has been great. So I'm going to shift gears a little bit and talk about intuition. So we've had a few conversations in the past where, you know, the goosebumps show up or you just know you're on the right track. How do you get your intuition? How does it come to you?

Mora: 13:23

I think it comes to different people in different ways and I think in different situations it does happen in different ways. But I think most of the time for me it's about a quiet little voice in my head and or in my heart, I'm not sure where, but inside me, maybe it'd be even that wise one in I believe is in everyone that's just saying go or pay attention to this or you need to know or this is not the right thing for you. You know? So there's just a quiet voice that tells me to be, to wake up, I think and pay attention to be alert to what's going on and things are lining up the right way. Things are easier or I have good energy or a feeling about what's happening. I have found when I worked too hard against something or try to control the outcome, that doesn't work. So it's, it's this kind of balance between you need to do some work and you do, you need to show up, but you need to be alert to the things that happened that people around you, people will say things, events will happen, you get a certain reaction to those things. It's I, to me it's a very internal piece.

Speaker 4: 14:51

Okay,

Speaker 2: 14:51

very cool.

Mora: 14:52

That make any sense?

Heather: 14:53

Yes, it absolutely makes sense. I sometimes have say it's the quietest voice in the room, you know, and the one that you really like. Usually

Speaker 4: 15:06

the[inaudible]

Heather: 15:08

with me, it's sometimes the enthusiasm reigns very loud and then the quieter voice is sometimes in line with that enthusiasm and sometimes not. But yeah, i t's the quietest voice in the room sometimes. So.

Mora: 15:25

Well even your own quiet voice I guess is what I'm thinking. Cause I'm the kind of person, I love the new events or let's try new things. I'm all got lots of energy for that stuff, but it's not always the best thing. Right. So then it's like Mora slow down or after that's over, you know, how much benefit or is this where you want to continue and if you, if I slow myself down enough and quiet myself enough, it will come. It doesn't necessarily come in that moment, you know? Then it's like, okay, there's nothing there right now, but I've put it out with and I feel the energy and then it will move and then it comes back to me a couple of days later. You know, like, so for example, this just popped into my head. Just very current example in my life. Okay. I was thinking that, Oh, I would love to have an international student from high school come and live at our house. I have a girl that's going in grade 10 now and a little guy in grade eight, boy, we have a spare room. I'd love to have another teenager that would be so much fun. And we'd been away for six months having our own events or we know how to welcome people and support people. I have been away from their home. That'd be such a good experience for me, for the kids and for this newcomer. Be lovely to share that. And then I sat with a while and I called an email, got all the information and I sent my references and they didn't. It would say that to have me. And then there's this, this little creeping voice in my head, that thing, you always could clean it the whole time. I'm real for extending yourself. Are you doing to maps? Great idea might not be the right time, you know? And I just said, well, okay, that's just the negative kind of voice in my head talking. And then I was just like, okay. So then I decided I'm just gonna be quiet and this sensitive to the universe and say, okay, direct me. My decision, what should I do here cause I really, really, really want to do this. It'd be so much thought, but yeah, maybe I will be, I'm tired already. Maybe I should just take some time to take better care of myself. I can do it another time. Just give yourself some time to figure it out. So I left it for a couple days and then I have a couple of days later. It just, it was just clarity out of the blue. I don't know if it's driving the car or walking the dog or it was, I can't remember now. It's like, Nope, you didn't do that right now. Nope. You can wait till next year. One more year won't make a difference. And I wrote them and told them I wasn't going and she wrote me back, please, please, I sent this perfect sweet little German boy for you. And I'm like, no, I really can't cause it. And that was so tempting. It's so easy to give it and because that's what people do. They push like, Nope, I got to keep my boundary and you take care of me. I feel like I received the answer for me at this moment is not at this time. So I wrote her back and said, sorry, not this year. Keep me on the list and I'll talk with you next summer.

Heather: 18:32

Perfect. Well done.

Mora: 18:35

Well you know, and it's hard because for me, I want to do everything. I don't want to miss out on anything and what a great opportunity. But you know, there's only so much one person could do at a time. So

Heather: 18:46

yeah. And it's so true. People will push because they see that potential and then you put your hand up and, and people will push to, to take advantage of what looks good on paper. Right.

Speaker 3: 19:03

Hmm.

Heather: 19:04

So well done for listening and holding firm on your boundary. That's awesome.

Mora: 19:10

It takes a lot of practice and not that I do a perfect all the time, but yeah, it's really important. And I felt really good that I made that decision at the door forever. That helps me. But, and that just for now, that's all I can do for now.

Heather: 19:26

Well and it, and it brings a peaceful, joyful feeling almost. When you are aligned with that decision and you hold your ground. It's, it's a funny little thing, but it, it, there's always that release of like little bit of joy and peace I find.

Mora: 19:44

Yeah, I'm taking good care of me and I have to take good care of me. We have to take good care of herself if we want to take care of others. And I know that's what is important to me. Taking care of others, like taking care of my children and the students at school and the staff at my school. It's important for me to be there to support them, but I have to be healthy myself to do that. It's cliche, but that's what it comes down to. Holding those boundaries for myself. Yeah. Well and I think cliches are there for a reason. You wise woman you. That's right. I think you're probably right. That's why you go back to them. Yeah. There's some wisdom there.

Heather: 20:27

Absolutely. Well thank you so much for sharing that cause as current, it's profound. So I think lots of people will be able to resonate with that very simple yet profound example. So wonderful.

Mora: 20:44

It's not always the best, the big issues, you know, I think all those little things that up, they, you know, and you talked a little pebble and it's still cool. You don't have to drop a big rock in the pool to disturb the water. Even a little pebble can. So those little pebbles can be add up or can make big ripples, you know? So we need to make good decisions about the little things we think about the things we do.

Heather: 21:08

Well, that is an excellent way to leave this podcast, I think for people to think about because you're so true. Cause a little stuff stacks up and you can make an Island out of pebbles. Um, and I think sometimes the pedals actually are sneakier than the big events and people don't see it coming. Right.

Mora: 21:29

I think that's true. I think that's true. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Heather: 21:34

Well hopefully we'll do this again, Mora.

Mora: 21:37

Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about myself. What a treat.

Heather: 21:41

Absolutely. Well, you've got lots of gifts to share. Right.

Speaker 3: 21:46

Thank you, Heather. So to you, you're a delight.

Speaker 2: 21:49

All right. Well, until next time then

Speaker 5: 21:53

[inaudible]

Speaker 1: 21:54

thank you so much for giving us your time today. We truly appreciate our guests for sharing their stories and insights about how intuition has impacted their lives, and I'm so grateful for Peter trainer for his time and giving me this original music. It's now your turn. It's your turn to listen and act on your own intuition and help make the world a better place. Until next time, keep seeing being, knowing, and doing. If you like this podcast, please share it. If you want to find others like it, go to www.healingvitality.ca or wherever you would find your podcasts. We would love to have you join us on this journey. Come be a Crow sitting in the tree. Be part of our community.[inaudible].