Checking the Compass

Tending Notes · Issue 02 · July 21, 2026

The Field Note

I keep thinking about summer the way I used to think about it in school, less as a break, more as a season for exploration, reflection, and planning before fall and winter arrive, and eventually the new year.

In private practice, the things we plant now, marketing, new partnerships, the slow work of networking, tend to take about six months to actually bear fruit. Which means much of what shapes next January is being decided right now, even quietly.

And in those six months, we're still in it. Billing. Documentation. The ordinary upkeep of running a practice. All the systems of accountability that, however necessary, can pull our attention away from checking our own compass.

With clients, we often start with values, and from there, almost alongside it, we move into goals. I think it's worth asking whether we extend ourselves the same process. Vision, I think, is values given shape over time, often with some hope folded in too, hope for what the work could become, for who we're becoming inside it.

Sometimes that shows up as confirmation if we stop to notice it. Balance has been a value I've worked toward throughout my career, as a program director and as a business owner. It was a few years before the pandemic when I actually stopped and felt grateful that the balance I wanted was already there, built into the shape of my week, the same rhythm that's followed me since my days in community-based case management.

That moment of noticing did something. It let me feel the ease that comes with effort that's actually aligned, and it gave me a clearer sense of exactly where my boundaries were. So when something came along that didn't match my values, I could recognize it and actually pivot.

Maybe that's what checking the compass actually is. Not an audit. Just pausing long enough to notice what's already true. If you're on the path, let yourself feel that. If you're not, that's information too, the kind that only means something once you actually stop, be with it, and let yourself see where that wave of experience takes you. My hope is that something in that noticing can be transformative, simply because we finally let ourselves be present for it.

I don't know that I have it fully figured out for myself either. I'm just sitting with it this summer, and wondering if you might be too.

One thing worth tending to

Checking the compass offers real opportunities in both directions. If you confirm you're on the right track, how might you celebrate that, or simply let yourself feel the recognition? And if you notice you've drifted further from your values than you realized, how do you honor yourself for taking the time to notice at all?

Anyone who knows compasses well knows that even the slightest shift, left uncorrected, can lead you far astray over time. That's exactly why checking in regularly matters. Both directions are opportunities.

If checking the compass surfaces something, it might look like a fee that hasn't moved in years, even though you no longer feel undervalued the way you did when you set it. It might look like spending hours each month untangling your own bookkeeping, when what you actually value is protecting your time for clinical work, and the misalignment isn't the bookkeeping itself; it's that you've been doing it alone instead of bringing in a CPA who actually understands therapy practices. Or it might be marketing yourself broadly because a wide net used to feel safer, even after you've learned which clients you actually do your best work with.

If you notice these subtle shifts, positions that aren't quite pointing toward your values, or in some cases pointing in the complete opposite direction, you don't have to do anything about it yet. Just let yourself know it's there. That alone is a form of honesty most of us don't get much credit for.

A question (or two) worth sitting with

Where do you feel that you're on the path right now? And where, if anywhere, do you feel something quieter, not wrong exactly, just worth noticing?

Something worth knowing

In September, I'm opening something I've been building for a while, The Tending Circle, a small community for therapists in solo practice. More on that as it gets closer.

In the meantime, I started a small Slack space a few weeks ago. It's quiet, in the best way, a place where a handful of us drop in with whatever we're noticing, sometimes a sentence, sometimes nothing at all. No pressure to post, no pressure to perform insight. Just a door that's open if you want it. Come knock.

From a place of noticing

Tending Notes · Issue 01 · June 10, 2026

The field note

Over the last several months I have been party to very rich conversations about what happens to people in leadership when the structures around them create the kind of environment that causes a person to wonder whether their integrity, their whole self, is recognized within the work they are doing.

From what I have been observing, it seems like the flattening of hierarchies has dismantled something that many leaders did not know they were relying on. The peer layer that once made the role bearable. The colleague who understood the weight of the position. The senior relationship that offered context and containment. What remains is a leader surrounded by people who need things from them, with increasingly few who can simply be present to what the role costs.

Rather than offer this from a place of knowing, I offer it from a place of noticing. And what I am noticing in peer conversations is that some therapists in solo private practice may be living a version of the same thing. I wonder if the peer layer is being impacted, and whether this might be exactly the moment to tend to it deliberately.

Many of us chose solo practice deliberately. The autonomy of solo practice is not incidental. It is often the point. The freedom to set your own hours, hold your own caseload, build something that reflects your values without committee approval. That choice is worth honoring.

And yet even a chosen structure has costs. Choosing solo practice does not mean choosing solitude and it does not necessarily mean choosing aloneness. Those are different things. One is a preference. The other is something that happens to us inside the structure we chose, often without our noticing, and sometimes because the structures we align ourselves with, however pragmatically, do not fully honor the values that brought us to this work in the first place.

Some systems, depending on how they are constructed, may quietly overlook those values altogether. I am thinking that this is not necessarily by design, but by indifference. And what moves into that space is often something evaluative, extractive, and entirely indifferent to the person doing it. What fills it may be tokens or productivity points, the kind of recognition that measures output rather than witnesses the person producing it.

Accountability has a watcher. Someone or something is checking. Even when it is self-imposed, there is a quality of surveillance in it. It is useful. It produces results. But it does not change anything at the level of identity or meaning. And when the system does not know you, it cannot witness you. It can only measure you.

Witnessing is different.

Being witnessed is so different from being held accountable. Witnessing is inherently relational in a way that accountability is not. Many of us learn, grow, and find ourselves thriving when we commune with another. It is an adaptive form of validation. At its most affirming, we are telling the other: I see you. And as I see you, you see me.

The tension between accountability and witnessing is what I have been sitting with. A question worth sitting with together. What would it mean for our professional wellbeing to actively seek out spaces where we are not just held accountable but genuinely witnessed in our work?

Sometimes one's energy is best directed toward something they want to create. I hold hope for professional communities that say, simply and without agenda: I see you doing this work. And it matters. I look forward to exploring these communities alongside you and sharing what we find.

One thing worth tending to

We all have the ability to reflect on our achievements, big and small, outside the context of evaluative systems. Those systems come at a cost. There is very little room for honest self-examination within them. The natural tendency in those situations is defensiveness or compliance. When we show up in our own power to recognize our work, we can afford to look honestly at ourselves with curiosity.

I like to think that recognition creates safety first. And in spaces of safety, we can begin to reflect.

So here is my question to you, as I shift gears: As we enter the summer months, how will you plan to recognize yourself and create moments of reflection?

Summer has a way of shifting the rhythm of daily life, sometimes speeding things up and sometimes slowing them down, and with it can stir up feelings that deserve a little extra attention. This season also brings a natural invitation to tend to the behind-the-scenes work that supports meaningful care, the kind of tending that happens quietly but makes everything else possible. It is also, perhaps, an invitation to practice the very thing we have been exploring here: to turn toward yourself with the same recognition and curiosity you would offer a colleague whose work you genuinely respect. However this summer feels for you, it is a beautiful time for renewal at every level.

A question worth sitting with

As you tend to yourself this summer, what is one resource, a book, a tool, a person, a community, that has made your private practice more sustainable? Reply to this email. I would love to know. If you are willing, I will add it to a resource list I am building for our colleagues.

Something worth knowing

In September, I am launching The Tending Circle, a professionally held virtual community rooted in relational practice for licensed therapists in solo private practice. A space where the work of your practice gets dedicated time, consistent structure, and the quiet presence of people. No pressure. This letter stands on its own.

A. Meliora Relational Wellness · www.ameliorawellness.com