Gloria Taylor
As a graduate of Toronto East General Hospital School of Nursing, Gloria worked in several areas of nursing care. Her professional life changed as she began taking courses in marriage and family therapy, entered the internship at Interfaith Pastoral Counselling Centre and graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University with a BA in Religion and Culture.
Gloria continued her education at Azusa Pacific College in Los Angeles, California where she attained a MA in Marriage and Family. She was employed as a staff supervisor at IPCC, teaching and supervising Marriage and Family Therapy, as well as providing workshops in the community for notables in the field such as: Maria Gomori, John Banmen, Jane Gerber, Nathaniel Brandon, Stephen Levine, Ram Dass and others.
Gloria counts among her mentors the above list as well as Virginia Satir, Bennet Wong, Jock McKeen, Stan Grof and most recently, Jill Kennedy.
Gloria claims that it was relatively easy to take the nurse out of the hospital, but it took many years to take the hospital out of the nurse! One of the most intense experiences of this was her CPE chaplaincy program with her ongoing mentor, Rev. Ken Beal. Knowing her way around a hospital was second nature to her, but to be there with people in their pain and loss was nearly the undoing of this young nurse. Perseverence and her deep interest in becoming more fully human compelled her to learn to attend others’ pain without making it her own. That lesson continues to this day.
While president of the Satir Learning Centre of Ontario, Gloria hosted two international conferences in Waterloo with speakers from as far away as Australia and Asia. Gloria excels at mixing theory, art, music, and her razor sharp therapeutic skills in her work with groups. Her goal is to provide a context for Whole Person learning.
Always in search of new challenges, Gloria left her position at IPCC to open a private counselling and consulting practice where she continues to offer individual, couple, family and group services. She offers an AAMFT accredited course in Family of Origin as adjunct faculty at the Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. She co-designed a Satir-based couples workshop to enhance the dynamic between couples and among families. This design continues to be offered throughout the US and parts of China.
Gloria has traveled to parts of Europe, Latvia, Malta, Cuba and US, teaching her methods of family reconstruction as learned from the late Virginia Satir, known as the grandmother of family therapy. Locally, she has worked with groups and organizations including the Waterloo County Board of Education, the Saugeen Indian Band, Wilfrid Laurier School of Social Work and several social agencies throughout the province.
One of Gloria’s recent challenges and successes is her work with a writers group in Vancouver, Canada. Together they have produced two books on the theories, skills and writings of Virginia Satir and are currently working on a third.
As a recent graduate of the Mastery of Self Expression and the Abyss, Gloria is passionate about sharing her expertise about what she calls “Changing from the Inside.” Living, learning and growing in compassion are a way of life for Gloria and she is committed to taking this message to as many people as possible particularly during these very complex times.
Gloria knows that it is our individual and community responsibility to grow, seek change and hold a better place for those in our world who suffer in so many ways. Together it is possible and necessary. From a place of self-mastery, we are better able to attend to the ongoing challenges in our environment.