Episode 65: Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: When I started to do a little bit of research about, well, what could our field offer? What could therapy field hope to offer the environment?
Jessica Fowler: Welcome to what your therapist is reading. I'm your host, Jessica Fowler. Today we are speaking with Pamela Lowell. MSW, LICSW about her book my Summer with the Ospreys. Pamela has treated complex emotional trauma for almost four decades in private practice. She's also served as the clinical director, consultant and trainer for non-for-profit agencies. Pamela is an astute of observer of both human behavior in the natural world. After today's episode, please head on over and follow us on social media @therapybookspodcast to learn about the latest giveaway. And if you're enjoying these episodes, please leave us a five-star review. And as always, the information shared on this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
Welcome, Pamela.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Thank you, Jessica. It's happy. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Jessica Fowler: Well, as you know, we kind of chatted and listeners know, I like to start with this question. If you could share a memory of how reading has impacted you?
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: You know, I'm gonna share more than that. I'm gonna actually share a line from my book because I think it really summarizes it and I had to find it. But this is what it's personally, my self-care activity of choice. Second only to birding and walking, which are tied, is reading. As a painfully shy and socially awkward child who experienced more than her fair share bullying, I considered the library my second home and books as my only true friend. That is really true. I spent a lot of time in the library as a young person just devouring books, uh, just. And, and as an adult, I'm never without a book. Um, ones that I remember reading were like, um, biographies of Helen Keller, uh, Ann Frank as a child. Um, books like A Wrinkle In Time, To Kill a Mockingbird. You probably sense a little theme there a little.
Jessica Fowler: I was gonna say, I was sound like mine that I read when I was younger.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: So you know empathy , these are characters that in that engender a lot of empathy from us. They've had a personal struggle that they've had to overcome, and I think that's a probably a lot of where my social work and therapist roots came from, reading stories like that. And I also in my, um, book, include a whole chapter on book groups and that because those have also become, at least now, at this time in my life, part of my community, uh, to, to talk with others and share a book is just, it adds another layer of pleasure to recommend books to others and to talk about them. So, I just finished, uh, reading, uh, Birding to Change the World by Trish O'Hare. I wanna totally recommend it, even if you're not a birder, um, because she was a journalist, but also, loved, um, loved helping others and, and is like a social activist in a way that is, um, really interesting. So anyway, that's my, that's my reading spiel for you.
Jessica Fowler: I feel like we're a little similar in that way. What I never thought about the empathy piece and the books I read when I was younger, 'cause those were books that I read, light bulb went off. As you can probably tell, I love reading and talking about books. My, I've a couple book clubs and I have over the last couple, well, decades probably at this point. And so, I definitely, that part resonated with me. And you know, I think there is something as well when we think about mindfulness or maybe as we get older, you know, I would not call myself a bird watcher, but in some way I am where I go outside and I look and I find myself looking for birds or just noticing them in a different way that maybe I didn't when I was younger.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Mm-hmm. Well, we'll get to that a little later too. I wanna talk a little bit about some of the science behind that for therapists to kind of explore and, and the general public too.
Jessica Fowler: Oh, well we can start there if you.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: I think being out, there's a lot of really interesting studies that are coming out now about the importance of being in nature and even specifically birding for mindfulness and for people, especially for people who are depressed. Um. Studies that we really didn't have access to before. They use like an app that you can press, you know, a mood app, and they've really found a strong correlation and, and are starting to like, think about that for our college population that have been somewhat, uh, depressed from co, you know, covid stuff and all the anxiety and angst that happens in that age group anyway. So, I think nature can be healing. I also think there's some space for therapists and the general public to think about, um, echo anxiety, the anxiety that we have about what's happening to our planet and how do we, how do we be in that space? How do we feel hopeful about that? So, there's a lot of room, I think, for that intersection. I'm always interested in the intersection between, uh, to different topics. Always have been. And I think that, so that's just something interesting for your listeners maybe to think about and certainly address those things in, in my book.
Jessica Fowler: You do adjust 'em. And I would think too, right, the more that we spend outside in nature, the more that we're gonna start to pay attention and care.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Mm-hmm.
Jessica Fowler: Like even starting young with kids, right? This push of kids being outside or the thousand hours outside, challenge, things like that, right? When we're outside, we're gonna start to notice and hopefully care a little bit more about what's happening.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Jessica Fowler: So, can you share what's in your book? Like what are readers getting when they open your book?
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Well, the book is, you know, sort of the through line of the book is, the book is called My Summer with Osprey. So, it's basically about a summer that I spent monitoring. Ospreys the bird on a river nearby. We have a really dense osprey population. So, it sort of channels that journey that I took. But it, I, I had started thinking, oh, that'd be kind of fun. I can take some pictures, you know, and it ended up, uh, after the very first time that I was out there, I was so jazzed about it and so excited that I knew I had to write everything down. I started drawing and painting some of the things that I saw. So, they're going to get that glimpse of not only that journey of, you know, what is it like to band a bird? What's it like to be out with scientists on the river? What's it like to hold a bird, a wi, a big wild bird in your hands? Like those are really interesting. But I also wrote it through, uh, I'm a trauma therapist, so I wrote it through that lens. Like, what, what is it about being a trauma therapist that brings a different sort of look to this and it, and it did bring a different look. I started to think about how nature and Mother Earth has been traumatized by humans. How the birds and the wildlife, how the salt marshes, how things are happening to them because of human intervention. That isn't always such a great intervention. So, they'll get that too. They'll kind of get that sense of my journey of how did I find community, how did I end up where I ended up at the end of the book, caring and being really interested in the environment in a very different way than I was when I started out. And hopefully that will inspire them in some way to, to think about, to think about those things a little differently.
Jessica Fowler: So, I will say this is a different book than I usually have on the podcast 'cause it is like your story of your summer with the Ospreys and you sort of just intertwined this therapist lens into it in an interesting way. And so it was just interesting to read it in that way. But with, I'm guessing the larger sort of goal of thinking about our impact that we have on this earth and what's happening to this earth.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Yeah. Well, you know what was really fascinating for me was that I, I had started when I started to do a little bit of research about, well, what could our field offer? What could therapy field hope to offer the environment? And so, I found a whole chapter by Albert Pandora, who you may remember from Psych 101 courses that you might have taken in college. About modeling and accountability and agency being so important. And he has theories about how do we impact, how do we influence people in terms of doing something or caring about the environment. So, I did, um, ask three questions. I want people to think about what is happening that they could ask each other, what's happening to the environment? What are you doing to help? Is there something more we can do together? And the best part for me, I think that brought it all full circle, was I started to imagine Mother Earth if Mother Earth showed up in my therapy office, what would that intake look like? And, and I just, uh, I, I actually, as parts of when I was writing parts of that, I did get teary and because I, it felt so much more real to me than this abstract, uh, oh, we live here, but there's this system that we're all connected to that we don't think a whole lot about how we are taking care of what is our impact, how do we take care of it? So that really is the final message, but it's also, I really want people to feel hopeful and joyous too, that there are things that we can do if we're doing them together, and that part of those questions are about that. Is there something we can do together? Wow, if we do something together, we're not alone, we don't feel helpless, we are connected in a different way and we can make an impact. So, all that, it's all pretty intentional the, the way it ended up. Wasn't intentional, but when I went and started to really write it, it, it really made sense to have those things as through lines.
Jessica Fowler: So that part about the book when you were interviewing Mother Earth and like doing the treatment plan was so interesting 'cause I think it was impactful. It was a way I had never thought about it. When you give a voice to what Mother Earth would say, you know, you took pause like, oh, okay.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I do that. I reenact that when I, so I've been going around, uh, doing, uh, different presentations all over the place, and I do some demos with the audience on how to band a bird. They kind of love that, and it's kind of light and fluffy. And then I sort of take a pause and then I have an audience member role play Mother Earth, and I'm the therapist and it's like, it is silent in the room. Like people are, whoa, what is, what's going on here? And, and really, but walking out of there feeling really energized because they, they really got it, it lit up a different part of their brain, which is what we wanna do as therapists or our artists as well. You know, we want to, um, make people think in a different way or make them feel something a little bit differently than they did before we, uh, we came into their lives. That's kind of what we're about. We're change agents. We're hopefully try to be.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah. Definitely. And the hope too. I mean, this is spoiler alert, but these birds were almost extinct and now are not. Right. Yeah. That's the hope. That's the hope that we can do things to create lasting change.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Yeah. The story of Ospreys is such a remarkable one, and I guess from for other birds too. But uh, at one point in the seventies there were only a dozen pair left. On the coast, uh, on the East Coast, the US because of DDT, because of all sorts of, uh, mostly because of DDT and scientists got together. Uh, Rachel Carson, which is another book that I completely recommend, Silent Spring, if people wanna dive a little deeper into environmentalism, it's, she's a beautiful writer. She wrote a very moving book that made it to the New York, top of the New York Times, uh, bestseller list. But everyone was, you know, doubting her because she was a woman in those times, and yet there were enough people, there was enough public pressure to do something. Can we help these birds and can we get rid of DDT? And the world came together, the whole entire world signed onto that and said, yeah, we're gonna ban DDT. And then folks built for the Osprey population anyway, they built platforms and did some, um, translocating of chicks and eggs and, and now we've, you know, we have, at least on the south coast of Massachusetts, one of the densest populations on in the country. We have over a hundred nests that we monitor. And so, yeah, I, I like to think if the world could come together once or twice or probably more than that, if you look at history to do something that maybe we can leap over some of these divisions that, that we have and I don't know, most people really kind of like nature, both sides of the aisle kind of say ya we don’t need nature. There aren't a whole lot of people that say, yeah, we don't need nature. I don't know. I haven't met a whole lot anyway. It's a real con place of connection for people.
Jessica Fowler: Absolutely is. And you know, whether we think about it or not, most of us usually feel better when we go outside.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Absolutely.
Jessica Fowler: Who would you say your book is for?
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: I think, you know, it's found a, it's found a really lovely audience in birders for sure. That, that was kind of an easy one for me, but I, I would love for more therapists to read it 'cause I think they would really connect and, and be, and especially just, just some of the things about how we have to keep our internal lives or, or our experiences with clients. We're really not shouting out about, we can't talk about those things publicly. And so, if there's some loneliness there that comes along with this job, especially if you're out and about, so well, what do you do? What did you do this week at work? Um, I don't know. I helped somebody not, um. I don't know. So, so it becomes really tricky and challenging. So, I think therapists for sure, um, people who are in therapy, birders, uh, environmentalists, people who care about nature or just wanna be uplifted. I, I didn't want it to be complex. I didn't want it to be overly wordy. I want it to be conversational. I have a lot of my artwork in there 'cause I think I was kind of on the fence about whether I should put it in. And one of my friends who's an artist, said, well, Pam, you know, grownups need, need art too. They need pictures too. You know, it's gonna be a picture book. How? And I said out loud, am, really, uh, weave together all these themes. It's just gonna be a mish mishmash of stuff. But, but it ended up working in a really, um, at least it seems like people are, are connecting with it and really enjoying it. So, I think that's it. Um, mindfulness too, I guess. Uh, there's a lot about just being present and slowing down, and that's important.
Jessica Fowler: Well, it's interesting because when I think about this book, right, as therapist, we often write about these topics, but I don't hear a lot of therapists writing about the environment, and I think you're right like we integrate it into our work. Through grounding and mindfulness, but yet we don't necessarily talk about it as a whole in that way. And you found a way to link the two together, which I think is helpful. It gives me another lens to look through as I do my work. And I'll say too, that even though it's like this is a, this can be a large, heavy topic when you sort of think about it in the way of like what we're doing for our environment, but at the same time, it's a very it's a very calming book, I think as of the details that you give and then the artwork that it was, it was very calming, if that makes sense. I dunno if it does, but it was a very calming book.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Well, that's good to hear. Well, I do put the, uh, for your therapist who practice EMDR, they'll know what I'm talking about when I say, um, there is an illustration of the butterfly hug in there and that's something I do in all my trainings and with many of my clients. I'm sure you do some version of that. Yeah. Well, it's calming to, to also feel like I, I wanted the questions that I asked at the end of the book to not have people feel despondent, to not just sort of throw their hands up and the spaces that therapists can work with their clients around some of these issues are science-based. Um, we're not saying, oh, go for a walk in nature and it'll be fun for you. There is evidence-based stuff out there now that proves that it's true. So, if you can read a whole book about that, and I certainly for my own self, I mean, when I entered into this story, I was feeling pretty lost and alone. We had just moved to new area. I had lost our, our old home due to some, well, they can read about that in the book, but we had, we sort of felt like we had to move and so it was really about how do I. And, and all of us lost our communities after Covid. We all lost a part of our, our communities, parents of young kids, nurses, teachers, all of us lost something and we're still grieving that. And so ,to read about how do I reemerge into the world again, how do I connect with people showing not telling is really important in writing. So, I didn't want this to be a, you should do this. I do that all day long in my work. Hey, have you thought about trying x, I wanted to just show by example. This is, this is what happened for me, and maybe people could think, hey, if she could do that, maybe I, maybe I could go join a book group that I've never joined before. Maybe I could start a new hobby that would connect me with a new community and reemerge from some of that loneliness that that many of our clients, I'm sure you see this in your session, a lot of people still tell me that they're lonely and they're having a hard time.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah. That's, I don't know. I mean, I guess you kind of answered what my other question was gonna be. What impact are you looking for this book to have on your readers and that's another level to think about that. You do talk about that connection in there and creating community on top of all the other things that you talk about.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Yeah. Too many things. No
Jessica Fowler: Well, and it's not a longbook, but it all, you know, just sort of seems to go together
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: and, and I think it's pretty readable. It's not, it's not heavy. You don't, it's not gonna, I mean, you could read a page or two at a, a day if you wanted to, but, um, but it's not, I don't think it's kind of, it requiresctoo much work on the part of the reader. I wanted it to be conversational and calming like I was, I wrote it for my, basically, I wrote it for my friends. I said, well, how would they, would they wanna read this and that's basically the audience that I had in mind. Now, some of my friends are therapists, but not all of them are. So that was sort of, and, and a lot of them are in the book because I wanted it also to be very much about specific, uh, place, so, people could say, oh yeah, I have a friend like that, or, that reminds me of my workspace. So, I wanted that people to, for it to be relatable, for them to laugh a little bit, to have some joy and to to, to feel some, some nice hope and nice emotions that maybe they haven't felt in a while.
Jessica Fowler: Oh, wonderful. What would you say, is there anything else you would like to listeners to know about your book?
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: I think we've covered, I think we've covered most of it by your, by your questions. I mean, I could, I could go on and on. I mean, I could go on and on more about specific birding stuff, but I'd rather, I'd rather them sort of, I'd rather them think about it with, uh, read the second part of that title of the title of the book. It is my Summer with, with Ospreys, but it's much more a therapist's journey towards hope, community, and healing our planet. That's the piece that I think I use the Ospreys as a vehicle to get there. And so I don't want them to, if they don't like Bird, my, some of my colleagues are like, I don't like birds, but I really liked your book.And I was like, well, good. That's great.
Jessica Fowler: I mean, it's about birding, but it's not about birding.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
Jessica Fowler: Well, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. Where is the best place for our listeners to connect with you?
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Well, they can connect with me on my website, which is www.pamelalowell.com, and they can email me. I love to get emails from readers. It seems like every day I am getting another email from someone who's read it, and that's, and I answer everyone. It's really been just, it's opened up, so I've just met so many wonderful people through it. It's just been really, really exciting and rewarding. So, they can do that. They can get the book through my website at a discount discount from, um, and it's available on Amazon.
Jessica Fowler: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much.
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW: Thank you so much, Jessica. I had a great, great conversation.
Jessica Fowler: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of what your therapist is reading. Make sure you head on over to the website or social media to find out about the latest giveaway. The information provided in this program is for educational and informational purposes only, and although I'm a social worker licensed in the state of New York, this program is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a patient therapist relationship.
About the author:
Pamela Lowell, MSW, LICSW, has treated complex emotional trauma for almost four decades in private practice. She has also served as a clinical director, consultant and trainer for not-for-profit agencies. Lowell is an astute observer of both human behavior and the natural world. In her latest book, My Summer with Ospreys, she weaves together observations and personal experiences into an exciting narrative as a passenger on the Lucky Me along with the scientists of Mass Audubon, and a cast of dedicated volunteers. With her original watercolor illustrations throughout, her journey towards hope, community and healing our planet is one that can inspire us all to be better stewards of our ever-changing world.