Check Out Cole Huggins’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cole Huggins.

Hi Cole, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
After spending 30 years in Appalachia digging holes for my landscape company, I decided it was time to find something more meaningful for myself. My brother encouraged me to move in with him in Athens to attend college. So with no real clue what I was going to do, I packed my bags left my home of 30 years and moved to Athens, Ga. As I was trying to figure out what in the world I was going to do I had a life changing moment. As I was on my way to shadow my professor at Grady Hospital I noticed all the people that were on the outside looking in who needed help. I myself have endured really hard times in my childhood and life decided I needed to figure out who to help those people. I found the Gwinnett Campus of UGA which offered an MSW. I took the clinical route to become a therapist. I have lost my mother and dear uncle to suicide. This has been a driving force to motivate me to become the best therapist I can so that I can help those who have also been hit by heavy blows in life.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Life has never been smooth for me, it has always be hard. My father was an abusive alcoholic and my mother suffered form severe mental illness. I never knew where I would be staying the night, I never had stability for most of my life. The amount of pain a childhood like that can cause a human being gets to the point where the only option you feel you have to find relief is to take your own life. Compound that with the guilt of not being able to save my mother I attempted suicide. Thankfully my little brother came to the rescue and helped to drag through the mud of life until I could start standing on my own and attempt to heal. That is when I started therapy for myself to learn how to properly grieve my mother’s death and along with Psilocybin Assisted Therapy I have found joy while living something I thought would never be possible for myself.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
grief/loss and trauma.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
My brother, Tameka Ruffin, Laura Silverman.

Pricing:

• $150 per session

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sweetgrassict.com