Why Might I seek “Interfaith Pastoral Care” while at the School for Social Work?
As budding social workers and clinicians, we are wise to seek psychotherapy for any number of reasons,
many of them being connected to the challenges and stressors that emerge during our rich and rigorous
training experience at Smith. However, within spiritual services we want to emphasize the "meaning
making” aspects of utilizing a professional listener, and provide an additional space to explore and
grapple with issues of personal struggle, but outside a clinically diagnostic framework. Both Jennifer and
I have training and experience as chaplains (religious leaders who provide spiritual services to an
institution of any kind) and also in human service work. We offer a mode of self-exploration and healing
that is complimentary to many modes of psychotherapy. Object relations, systems theory, and other
frameworks emphasized at the SSW inform our work.
We are religiously trained in the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life but the pastoral care is nonsectarian in orientation. At the same time, we are interested in exploring transcendent themes and open to
all forms of “meaning making” by way of religious and spiritual practice. We are available in times of
extreme need and crisis, but also for self-exploration and spiritual questions.
We invite you to contact us!
-Matilda Rose Cantwell