The holidays bring joy but can also be a stressful and difficult time for many people.

“Often there’s a big difference between the ideal that people hold in their hearts and their minds about how things should be on these significant occasions, especially Christmas. The reality of is that it is often full of difficult emotions. Grief … anger, resentment, guilt. All kinds of very strong emotions come up when you have a time like this that encapsulates an expectation of family. And I think we all have an image in our minds of how a family should be. Everybody’s supposed to be in harmony, gathered together, enjoying each other’s company. And so often that’s not the reality….Relationships can be fractured. People can be living so far apart that they can’t see each other. Families are split by marital splits.

There is also the busyness of the season. Do people talk about those kinds of pressures?

Yes, and it can be very hard to figure out how to prioritize those things. What’s actually going to determine how I answer all those requests and demands? Am I going to go with other people’s expectations? Am I going to figure out what’s most meaningful for me? Who am I going to let down? Especially if families are trying to [divide their time] at Christmas between two sets of parents or maybe more…. Trying to please everyone…. Often it’s felt afterwards too. People have some excitement going in, but sometimes they feel pretty bruised coming out.

How do you help your clients through those things?

I trained in a model called voice dialogue, which is similar to something that’s becoming very prominent now, IFS, internal family systems therapy. I trained in a precursor of that… And that’s about parts….We think of ourselves as a unitary entity, you know, ‘I’m just me.’ But in reality, we have all kinds of different parts that operate differently in different situations and have come in to answer the needs of different situations.

Often these parts have come in to protect our vulnerability…. We adopt these protectors because they answer our needs. So, we’re born into a family, we have to fit into it and manage in it. So the parts come in to help us do that. And every person’s accommodation to their family will be different. The parts are protective and creative. …So if I, for example, learn to please other people as a way of accommodating to my family, that protects my vulnerability, but it also gives me a way to interact….

These parts usually work up to a point, and then they hit a wall, and they don’t answer all the needs anymore. And that’s when people usually come to therapy.

My approach is always that what people have learned to protect themselves with is always valid because it worked, and it was necessary for survival. That doesn’t mean it’s working now.

Do people sometimes create or discover a new part?

That would be part of the work, to protect your vulnerability in an alternate way so that you don’t have to use that one that you learned way back when. You now have other options…

There’s also a capital S self … the one who can know all the parts and understand them in their own terms….  Meeting the parts with compassion and understanding is the way to help them loosen up, not to call them some kind of pathology and try to rip them off.

You highlighted a Christmas theme in that.

Being oneself is not toxic. We can come before God as we are at Christmas, We shouldn’t shut ourselves out of the stable because we think we or our families aren’t good enough. The message is goodwill to all people.

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In a pastoral announcement, Bishop Shane Parker wrote: “Sharon helped thousands of people in the course of her career as a skilled, wise, compassionate, and faithful counsellor. She will be greatly missed and grieved, even as her life is celebrated with much thanksgiving. May the hopeful light of Christ, which burned brightly in Sharon, bring comfort and peace to her family and all who grieve her passing.”

Heather Fawcett, who succeeded York as the executive director of the Ottawa Pastoral Counselling Centre (the OPC) after she retired in 2023 told Crosstalk that there has been an outpouring of grief at the Centre among the many people whose lives she touched. York retired after a long career with the OPC, including 11 years as its executive director. She continued a remote practice as a psychotherapist at the OPC until recently.

Fawcett described her as a wise and kind mentor who loved to laugh, remembering how she listened thoughtfully to the challenges faced by her successor but also teased her from her retirement saying, “I’m glad it’s you not me.”

“She was a life-force,” Fawcett said, “not only a life force but a life-giving force.”

The Rev. Dr. Canon Peter John Hobbs, director general of Anglican Community Ministries (including the OPC) said York was held in the highest regard for her therapeutic abilities. “Sharon was respected, but she was also really loved…. People really cherished their relationships with Sharon, and it’s not an understatement to say by any stretch of the imagination that she made a remarkable impact on the lives of individuals she cared for, but also in our diocese,” he said. “Her commitment to the OPC goes back 30 years or more.  She was the clinical coordinator or supervisor. She was, for many years, the person that people would call, particularly clergy…..Although she did one-on-one work with people who wanted psychotherapy, she was also there in a consultative role for parish clergy if they were facing a particularly challenging pastoral situation. It may or may not have resulted in a referral to the OPC, and very often it did, but in other circumstances, it helped just to be able to have a sounding board.” He added, “I’ve always said that one of the great measures of Sharon’s excellence as a psychotherapist is that the clergy of this diocese entrusted their families to her.”York was instrumental in creating the OPC’s Counselling Support Fund (CSF), which is used to provide financial assistance for people who need counselling but can’t afford the fees. “She worked tirelessly to establish that fund. And by the time she retired, there was more than $200,000 in it,” said Hobbs.

“Sharon held a conviction. Anyone who wanted counseling should have it, which actually is a conviction that we shared,” Fawcett said. “Because we both believe therapy ought to be available for all who hurt and have experienced loss or trauma and who want to work for themselves as part of growing and healing, and it ought not to be available only to those who can afford it. And so, because of this, Sharon was passionate about building and sustaining OPC’s Counseling Support Fund (CSF).”

Fawcett shared that she and York had a conversation this past November about balancing stewardship of the Counseling Support Fund with compassion “because there’s only so much money and we don’t want to exhaust the fund that we have. There’s such a high demand.” But she said that York reminded her of her view that the “OPC is God’s ministry and it is his money. …He knew who would be coming our way and what they needed. Our goal as EDs was to have compassion, to use the money well and to trust him to provide. She also spoke to me about the importance of fundraising in order to ensure the fund would always be available, and so it came as no surprise that in lieu of a retirement gift or flowers for her funeral, she wanted people to honour her by supporting that which she was so very passionate about and that was the Counseling Support Fund.”

York’s family wrote this moving tribute to her: “Sharon touched the lives of many people through her therapy work, her advocacy, and her community building. She was a fair and kind person, who strove to help people heal and to make the world a better place. She was quick to laugh, quicker to hug, and she lived her life to the fullest. She was a gardener, a kayaker, a runner, a baker, a tea drinker, a kitchen dancer, a star gazer, and a jam maker. She was an amazing mother, sister, partner, and friend.”

Information on how to donate to the Counselling Support Fund can be found here:  https://tinyurl.com/3nweeu7t

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The OPC is excited about the engaging look and feel of our new website.  People often seek counselling during difficult moments in their lives. With this in mind, we sought to make this new site intuitive, uncomplicated, and easy to navigate, making it simple to find what is wanted quickly and easily. We think this new website showcases the OPC for who we are: a current, vibrant, positive place with therapists who care and are ready to support those who seek our services.  So, please consider this your personal invitation to check us out! Get to know who we are and what we offer.

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