I understand how challenging life can be!

My story.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Andrea Seniw and I live in Edmonton with my husband of 32 years. In a way, it feels like my whole life has been in preparation for this call to be a counsellor. My mentor told me once that when God calls, he also equips. He was right! If I am honest, much of the equipping has been painful, but it is that very pain that God has used. In fact, all pain in God’s hands is an opportunity to know him better. C.S. Lewis said that, and I agree.

I was a little girl who was growing up in a family that didn't want her

 Being unwanted was the single-most profoundly damaging experience of my life. I was told from an early age that I was not wanted and if possible, my mom would send me back. I lived in fear that my mom would abandon us and I would sleep either with her or on the floor of her bedroom so that she could not sneak out in the night and leave us. I was anxious in an era when there was no awareness around anxiety and I also suffered some significant trauma in my home. I came to believe that if my own parents could not love me, there must be something so wrong with me, that I could not be loved. I also came to believe that I did not matter, not to anyone.

I was naturally compliant but became a pleaser, working so hard to earn love. I had no sense of my own value as a human being, only the value that came from what I did. I lived a life of obligation and duty and was miserable.

Jesus had given me the faith to believe when I was young. It was at church that I learned that Jesus loved me and He wanted me. That was irresistible to me, a child who felt unloved and unwanted. He did not rescue me from my abusive home but he was with me through everything. I came to know later in life that He protected me in ways I did not know at the time. 

Understandably, I struggled as an adult. I never felt comfortable in my own skin and I didn't trust anybody so I felt very alone.

It has been through suffering that I have seen the faithfulness of God. Now that I am healed, I can say that my life experiences have built things into my character that could have come in no other way and I am grateful for that.               

Your suffering is not without purpose. I provide counselling from my Christian worldview. I understand life's challenges and how difficult it is to change. I have been there, to those dark, hard places where you wonder what’s wrong and if there’s help for you. There is! Just like there was help for me, there is help for you. I am so glad you are here. Someone helped me; I would like to help you.

I counsel women and couples and have a particular interest and focus on integrated health which includes the health of the mind but also the health of the body.

When we learn to move through suffering, rather than avoid it, then we greet it differently. We become willing to let it teach us. We even begin to see how God can use it for some larger end.

Henri Nouwen