Get to know me! (Shara Ogilvie)

This is where I try to be authentic so that you can see whether we’d be a good fit. For whatever reason, I attract clients with a certain “vibe.” Hopefully this will help you see if we’d connect! I give a personal sketch below, and I sound somewhat serious in it. But my personality is somewhat irreverent and chill. Maybe that’s part of how I’ve survived life: with a well-developed sense of humor! I love to poke fun at things and can crack a joke off any material.
Ok, so here’s me…
I have lived in Utah and have never lived elsewhere, but because of my loud voice and “out-there” opinions, I’ve been mistaken for being a New Yorker (kinda funny). But, nonetheless, I’m a pretty traditional person in a lot of ways because I believe in God and family and pay my taxes every year, on time.
As a child, I was the youngest of four, and my father was a severe alcoholic. My parents divorced when I was 10, and my mom remarried. Our family moved from a very, very small town (one that nobody has heard of), to a larger community just outside of Salt Lake City. So, in 4th grade, I switched cultures entirely from horse-owning-beer-guzzling hick-land, to living in a bedroom community for the upper-echelon of LDS church leadership, and attending school with well-to-do families. There were sidewalks where I lived now, and nobody drove their 4-wheeler in the streets.
In junior high, I got good grades and liked school, but my friends and I also liked staying afterwards and messing around with the phone booth, trying to prank call 1-800 numbers. I could only try this a handful of times though because my mom had two more kids now, and didn’t want me to stay after school, so I was supposed to high-tail-it home anyway.
In high school, I sang a lot and tried everything. I even jumped off the roof of my school and broke my foot, just goofing around with friends. I hung out with everybody except for the druggies and went to big group parties (totally drug and alcohol free… the 90’s were rad like that). But I also loved being alone. And on my own time, I read a TON. Even though I ended up being student body president, I still preferred to stay home on Friday nights and read classic literature and books on personality theory. I think I wasn’t as social as I pushed myself to be, because I really loved being alone and thinking. And when I dreamed of a career, the only thing I could ever think of was being a therapist because of my love for analysis and people-watching.
A little after high school and some college, I got married and had four children. I learned a lot -- which is an understatement – from being poor and surrounded by little ones. It totally changed me. It woke me up, jolted me alive, taught me a million lessons. I was more miserable and happier than I have words to describe. I learned what insomnia was when my second child was born. I learned what panic was when my oldest stopped breathing once. Sweet agony. If I’d never gone through that hard time, life would not be a hundredth as beautiful as it is now.
When my youngest was one, I went back to college and finished my bachelor's degree, and then my master’s, back-to-back. If I thought that being poor with little kids was hard, being in full-time school on top of it was a new kind of intensity. But there was no other way. When you are in a situation, you can only work from within that context, and that was where I was. I had to fight my own way out of poverty, ignorance, and a myriad of family problems that were mounting in the background.
When my youngest started full-day school, I went to work. And my marriage started unraveling in earnest. I’d just won the Mrs. Utah title of “miss congeniality” and won several trophies in that year’s competition, but I was about to no longer be a “Mrs.” and didn’t feel congenial anymore. I isolated from my friends and neighbors because my life seemed incomprehensible, and I didn’t know how to represent myself or my situation to anyone. I started my own therapy, and for the first time, I began to understand what emotions were. I learned that emotions meant something, and were not simply to be used against me, as evidence of my own shame and unworthiness. I was truly in a state of massive change, like the caterpillar in the cocoon.
Two years later, I was divorcing. Although it was a simple divorce in some ways, the real fall-out took almost a decade to settle. I had to pull myself out of what I now know was a deeply abusive situation. I’d only realized that I had the right to use my own logic back when I took my first philosophy class a few years previously. Before that, my husband had shamed my emotions and used poor non-logic to twist all thinking and arguments in his favor. I’d been so mentally abused for so long that I had a hard time seeing clearly for a while. If it hadn’t been for my training as a therapist, and my own therapy, I genuinely think the only solution in the future would have been suicide. I can attest to the cliché: “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
The next few years were so special. I got a good chunk of time to be single. I could buy what I wanted, go where I wanted, make friends, build myself professionally, read, think, grow, hike, play, sing, dance, sleep, eat, write… and answer to my own conscience. Here is where much recovery took place. Often when I work with clients who have divorced and who are chafing at the bit to find a new spouse, I reflect on how I NEEDED my own time to grow before I could take on a new marriage. Sometimes I share a little of my journey. Sometimes it applies, and sometimes it doesn’t. Everybody is genuinely on their own path.
I eventually did re-marry. I am one who see’s God’s hand as a golden thread guiding my story. I know I couldn’t have forced a re-marriage any sooner than it happened, and when it was right, it was right. This is something I know full well.
A second marriage has taught me so much and made me wiser. I turn 50 next year, and I’m starting to think that by then I will have earned that “Half-Century” participation trophy. It is not handed out for free, even if all you must do is participate. I’ve had to go through a few forest fires to make it this far! My sense of humor hasn’t suffered because of my story. I think it’s better! It’s wiser, and considerably darker, but it is still in full force. And as for my faith in the growth process, I couldn’t believe more strongly in it! I’ve seen the forces of goodness and growth catch me and carry me, like a jet stream or a trade wind, right where I needed to be next. I think that informs my work in counseling. I’ve seen it in my own life and in my client’s lives a thousand times: hang in there…there are forces working in the background that are carrying you right where you need to go.