“They say everybody that gets divorced moves to California and becomes a therapist, so I guess I’m a cliche.”
The owner of the Marianne Clyde Center for Holistic Psychotherapy is anything but. In 1990, just after she got remarried, Clyde was considering graduate school when she met a psychologist who was also an ordained minister.
“My dilemma was how can I incorporate my faith and psychology. … Is that mixable? Is that something that I could actually do?” says Clyde. “She taught me to be fearless and loving, and that people have within them the capacity to overcome anything.”
After getting a master’s degree from National University, Clyde moved to Japan in 2002, where she lived for eight years in a high-rise apartment that shared property with a Buddhist temple. Clyde began studying zazen meditation there and was reminded of the importance of connecting with your creator, knowing your true identity and other principles that help an individual stay calm, centered.
“I’m known as a Christian therapist, but I don’t like labels, never did,” Clyde, who has written Zentivity: How to Eliminate Chaos, Stress, and Discontent in Your Workplace and two other books, explains. “It’s been a strong evolution in that while the core [Christian] beliefs are still there, they’ve expanded in a variety of ways.”
But that’s not all that the 2017 Fauquier Chamber of Commerce Business Person of the Year learned overseas—she also took note of how other countries approached female microenterprise development and, while working in Fauquier with the nonprofit Generosity Feeds, developed Be the Change Foundation, a 12-week educational training program allowing interested entrepreneurial women to apply for $2,500 loans. The first session began in March with eight students and this fall hopes to take 10.
“Don’t let stereotypes keep you in a box,” Clyde, a grandmother of 15 who recently went skydiving in Warrenton and shortly after got “just breathe …” tattooed on her right wrist, says. “And if you have a desire or a calling in your heart, I believe that that is planted there by God to be nourished and grow and keep your unique footprint in the world.”
