Tessa Iacono

Agency: Divorce Recovery (Our Family Services)

Term: Spring - 2004

I am doing my internship at Divorce Recovery. Starting in two weeks my main responsibility will be co-leading a Children of Divorce support group. The main emphasis of the groups is to provide support for kids and their families as they move through the divorce transition. The group will last 8 weeks and will focus on topics such as grief and loss, anger management, stress, coping skills, and forgiveness. I also work in the office at Divorce Recovery. I am organizing, and updating the system they have for their library. The library includes books in topics such as: Divorce, Families, Children, Sexuality, Self-Improvement, Marriage, etc., and the books in the library can be checked-out by other people in the agency as well as by clients.

Divorce Recovery is part of the Family Counseling Agency, which provides services to youth, adults, the elderly and families. Divorce Recovery offers support groups for children and their families as they go through, or have been through, the divorce process. I decided to do this internship because I eventually want to go into Marriage and Family Counseling. I thought that seeing the reverse, or families that are breaking apart, would be a good opportunity for me to learn about the problems that all families face. After graduation I plan on attending a graduate program for marriage and family therapy.

Since beginning my internship, and taking the mandatory group leader training workshops, I have learned about the divorce transition, and what leads to the dissolution of marriages. I have also learned effective ways for families to cope while going through this transition. I have learned important leadership skills that will enable me to effectively lead a Children of Divorce support group. I am sure once the group begins I will learn many more things from the kids that I will be leading.

At the very first group leader meeting we were asked to share with the group what our greatest fear was in life. As other people went around the room and shared what their greatest fear was a lot of them became very emotional, I was no exception. My greatest fear is going through life and not making a difference; that I will get to the end of my lifetime and find out that everything I did wasn’t worthwhile. As I was saying this I began to get choked up and I think it was because to actually have to say your fear out loud is admitting to the group that it could happen. It was a good experience though because I now feel somewhat accountable to making sure that my worst fear doesn’t come true. Since I know what my worst fear is I can take the steps necessary to avoid the negative outcome. This is just one example of how doing an internship helps you to learn so much more about yourself then you would learn if you just took classes. Advice I would give to a student thinking about doing the internship would be to just take the risk and try it out. Be willing to fail, or do something you don’t enjoy, because at least you won’t make the mistake of spending your whole life doing something you don’t enjoy. However, this was not the case with me at Divorce Recovery. I have enjoyed every minute I have spent working in the office and participating in the group leader training sessions. I can’t wait to start co-leading a Children of Divorce group because that is where the real learning and experience is to be gained. Have fun, and let your supervisor know what you are interested in, they will be supportive in helping you to achieve your goals.

University of Arizona | College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
School of Family and Consumer Sciences | Family Studies and Human Development

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