Jonathan Flier’s President’s Message
November/December 2011

If you are wondering if you should renew or join the chapter for the first time, allow me to highlight a most excellent reason.

We Are A Village
What does that mean? Why would I desire or need a village in my life? What are my responsibilities and privileges if I belong to a village?

From the beginning of my tenure as President, I have promoted the idea that LA‐CAMFT should have the look and feel of a village. A village is a location, in both a "real" and a "virtual" world. It’s a real world gathering place where you experience with every event you attend this village, where you are welcomed and you feel connected, where you have come to learn and share a common experience, where you feel heard and responded to and hear and respond to others. Examples would be our Monthly Networking Events, Special Interest Group meetings (such as our Somatic, Expressive Arts, and Pre-Licensed 3000 Club), formal and informal sponsored social events, subgroup planning meetings, peer supervision groups and Board of Directors meetings.

There is also a virtual village, which may occur within a physical setting, an internalized setting or both simultaneously. The virtual village is one we carry with us throughout our daily lives. It embodies the sense of belongingness and the support and care received or longed for in our familial and social life. It's a neural, biological, emotional, sensory and intellectually holistic experience. It is a lifelong developmental necessity and a life without it creates a hunger, an unfulfilled longing. This longing is rampant throughout our communities and one of the primary causes of emotional and physical turmoil and distress in the world around us.

We promote ourselves as healers of this distress and we know that we must be in a process of healing ourselves to help heal others. So, you may ask, "why be a member of LA‐CAMFT, to others when members and nonmembers can partake in most of our organizational events?"

Being a member brings a deeper virtual and actual sense of connection to the community. You become one of the guardians of the community and a voice in constructing how LA‐CAMFT conceptualizes and responds to the needs, resources and future directives required to bring to fulfillment in the on‐going creation of our village life. Without your commitment, expressed through active membership, we will not be able to move forward, grow and prosper and all of the community to which we belong, will no longer have this special place, actual and virtual, to feel connected, nurtured and "healed." But if we all pool our resources of time, financial support and creative ideas, we individually and our community collectively will thrive and prosper giving us the energy and spirit to bring healing to all that work with us.

Jonathan Flier, LMFT, has served on the Board of Directors of statewide CAMFT. In 2008 he became President and restarted the Los Angeles Chapter of CAMFT. He has supervised associates for over 20 years at the Southern California Counseling Center and has a thriving practice that specializes in working with men treating trauma and anxiety with somatic based therapies including EMDR, high conflict couples and passionless couples and consultations with licensed MFTs and LCSWs.

This article originally appeared in the LA-CAMFT newsletter, the LA Therapist Update, in 2011 and has been updated for this issue of Voices.