Chrysalis Healing Center

By: Trisha Kingsbury

This world can feel overwhelming sometimes. It’s easy to get lost down a rabbit hole on your phone. Lose hours of your day to anxious fretting. End up at the mercy of your emotions and smash into the people around you. But there are strategies we can employ to help ourselves when we feel out of control. Practices we can undertake in community that help us learn what to do in the most stressful or despairing moments in our lives.

About three months ago I was on a train to New York City with my family. I sat down next to my dad, and he shared that he was thinking about taking over the space across the hall from his acupuncture clinic and opening a healing center. My response to him was, “I have no official qualifications as a healer…but I’m in.”

Even without any professional experience as a healer, I bring a lot of administrative firepower to the business. I’ve worked in office settings all my life and in 2021 took over as firm administrator for my husband and his father’s law practice in Rhode Island, giving my mother-in-law a much-desired chance to retire from the role.

Administration is something I genuinely enjoy. The spreadsheets, the organization, the attention to detail. All right in my sweet spot. But much more importantly, I am passionate about my own healing journey and eager to assist others in any way possible along their own journeys.

And let’s be clear right away: we do our own healing. No one else heals us. The healer is you. The one who becomes healed is you. The healing journey continues.

But the help of healing professionals and community can be a game changer, and certainly has been for me. In my early twenties I fell into a deep dark depression and sought help through the Employee Assistance Program at my office. This led me to a psychiatric nurse practitioner who eventually landed on a diagnosis of bipolar two and prescribed medications accordingly. These medications have saved my life multiple times over the last twenty years.

I’ve been spiritually curious all my life. I’ve explored many traditions including but not limited to Christianity, New Age, and Buddhism. I’ve taken classes and gone on retreats. I have a daily yoga and meditation practice. There is no end to my fascination with the unseen world. With consciousness, spirit, and mystery. I have more teachers and guides than I can name and am grateful for all of them, known and unknown.

My dharma (or gospel) is curated from endless sources including texts, podcasts, television, social media, movies, and music. My sangha (or community) is comprised of family, friends, colleagues, and fellow yogis and meditators. I am in relationship with my ancestors and aware of my lineages.

I am of this earth, part of the natural world, comprised of earth, water, fire, and air, like everything else. And I am connected to the eternal oneness and the great source of all there is through my higher self. I spend time thinking about and cultivating a relationship with my higher self every day.

I have engaged the help of several talk therapists over the years as well, with my current therapist having what I hope will be some staying power in my life. But it took time to find the right fit. While I always got something out of talk therapy, a willingness to cultivate a real relationship with the therapist is crucial if you want to do the real work. And the ways my current therapist is a fit with me is in the end very specific to me. It was worth taking the time to find her.

The Chrysalis Healing Center is in my hometown of Ashland, Massachusetts. My parents still live there, though I do not. I feel both part of the community and also separate from it. Maybe some will be surprised to know that this is what I am choosing to do for work, having known me in high school or otherwise. But this is what I am choosing to do for work. This is the work that matters. Helping people matters to me because I have needed and will continue to need help.

I hope everyone who feels called to it will come and visit us. Will make an appointment with a practitioner or come to a workshop or retreat.

We don’t have to feel out of control in this world. We can come together and build our toolboxes for those hard moments. We can make room for more ease, peace, and equanimity in our lives. I hope to see you soon.