Meet Amber Bezney

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amber Bezney. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amber below.

Hi Amber, thank you so much for joining us and opening up about the very personal topic of divorce. So many in the community are going through or have gone through divorce and we think hearing about how others dealt with the aftermath and managed to build a vibrant, successful life and career despite the trauma of divorce can be helpful to many who might be feeling a degree of hopelessness. So, maybe you can talk to us about how you overcame divorce?

There are two questions that I could combine to write about here. In overcoming my divorce I also found my next purpose in life, after the children flew the nest.. You see, I was a stay at home mom for 20 years which fulfilled my first purpose in life – to be at home to raise my children if we could afford to live off one income. We made that happen and I do not regret our decision for me to leave the workforce at 31 when our first child was born. Fast forward to 2017 when my husband and I divorced, and I found myself 20 years out of the workforce/business sector. What was I going to do to sustain a close to level lifestyle that I had when I was married? I had a settlement amount from our divorce and was advised not to touch it, to keep it for retirement and I had to find work! I was in counseling at the time trying to figure out my next steps and it was so helpful in finding my grounding, feeling empowered to forge out on my own. I have always been a helper type, empathetic friend and great listener. I decided I wanted to be a counselor and started looking at what it would take. 5 years. A masters degree from an accredited program would be the first part of that journey and would take about 3 years to complete. After the school part, I would then need to complete 3000 clinical hours in the counseling chair while under supervision until I could be a licensed professional counselor. I took my first class in January 2018 and I completed those 3000 hours on November 19, 2022. I have never felt so proud of anything I have ever achieved in my whole life. And I was 55 years old. At this time in the world, mental health was losing its stigma and many people were reaching out for help. I decided to take the plunge and open my own counseling practice, so I could be my own boss and I have never looked back with one regret. I took a really hard life transition, divorce, and used it to catapult me into a career to help others navigate relationships, build closeness and connection, fight anxiety, address trauma. In June of last year (2024), I am now a certified EFT Couples Therapist. While I could not save my own marriage, I can now help others in saving theirs. I can guide them through the barriers that they may be facing to promote and learn healthy communication patterns. That’s my passion, couples therapy, and using this great model that I have advanced training and am now certified in helps to make a difference in the world around me. When couples can regain their connection and strengthen their bond, the entire family benefits which leads to happier and healthier communities.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

My counseling practice is named Acacia Counseling and Wellness. I named it after the acacia trees that are the first ones to rise from the ashes after a fire, and the ones that give shelter to animals on the savannah. I see my clients as resilient humans who are just needing someone to walk with them to make sense of something that has been too difficult to handle by themselves. They too can rise from the ashes of trauma, loss, pain, betrayal. And as a counselor and helper of people in their distress, I strive to be like the acacia tree – a place to come to that feels safe and protected. I’m inspired by my clients who have been dealt a card deck they never wanted to play. I’m inspired by the couples who have spent time on my sofa where they sat at opposite ends not wanting to look at each other and 6 months later are sitting side by side holding hands. I feel so honored to walk alongside someone in their loneliness, pain and sadness, because I know how that felt when I was terrified and saw in my counselor’s eyes something that said “I got you, I can feel this fear with you and we will go through it together”.
What am I focused on professionally right now? My most favorite offering right now is the Couple Intensive Workshop. It is the “biggest bang for your buck” type of counseling for couples. You spend a day and a half with me one on one. It’s about 10 counseling hours together. We unpack negative patterns, understand how they formed, share the impact of those on each other and work to create a new bond. It’s hard work and deep conversations that will feel new and different but it’s transcendent and will change the structure of your bond and reconnect you in new and meaningful ways. You can check out a sample agenda and pricing on my website. , For those couples who don’t want to wait 10 weeks to feel relief or cannot find time for 10 weekly sessions, or have schedule restraints with work or childcare, this is a great option. I call it the double espresso of couples counseling. It is bold and packed with flavor and you will feel movement and change after 2 days.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I don’t know how I feel saying this out loud but, when I was slogging my way through my masters program and writing research papers every Sunday, my coping skill was to just get it done. I was taking in massive amounts of information every week and then required to write a professional paper about what we were learning. I had to drop by perfectionist tendencies or I would never complete it by the deadline. That taught me something at the ripe age of 50 that in being an 80 percenter, I’m much happier.
Connecting with someone outside of yourself in some capacity every day is so important. It could be a friend, a sibling, God, nature even a stranger. I know this from times in my life where I isolated, even the neighbor who I ran into brining our trash to the dumpster in the apartment complex where I lived, brightened my day by just a sweet hello and a smile. Be generous when you have even a opportunity to connect with a stranger, it could make their day. But yes, do not isolate. You will know when you are feeling blue, and that is the moment to text someone, “hi I’m thinking about you” and see what happens for you.
Lastly, to not to overthink things! You are way more important in your own head than in anyone else’s. Drop the worry of what other’s might be thinking about you, as they have most likely already moved on and it’s usually much worse in your head.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

Does a podcast count? Because I absolutely love the Happiness Lab by Dr. Laurie Santos. They are short (under an hour), you can listen on a walk, in the car, while you are cleaning your bathroom, you get the drift. Laurie was a Yale Professor who kept noticing all the students who looked unhappy. Here these young people had gotten themselves into an ivy league cream of the crop institution yet they seemed so stressed out. She decided to create a curriculum on the science of happiness and how to be happy. Her class blew up in popularity and from there she realized that she had hit on something big and started a podcast to share it with the world. Can achieving the ultimate success bring you happiness? How do you sustain happiness? How do people define happiness? She brings on learned people, experts in their field to talk of mental health and wellness. I always glean some knowledge from these and recommend them as a fun and easy resource.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://acaciacounselingllc.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095760753439