"There's still a lot of anxiety when I'm out alone"
Intriguing singles
Published in 1985 in the Macon Telegraph and News
Niki Collins remembers being terrified the 'first time she backpacked into North Georgia's Cohutta Wilderness alone. But now she finds it a challenge that leads to a state of euphoria, "a real high that lasts a couple of weeks after- wards," she said.
"There's still a lot of anxiety when I'm out alone, but the more I face my fears, the more confident I feel," she said, adding that she's lost count of her solitary treks.
"I also like to go into the area and camp with friends," she said, "but then it's very different—it's a social experience.
"If I feel a need to become more centered, to do some therapy on myself, I like to go into solitude."
Born in New Orleans, Collins was raised in South Africa by her physician mother after her parents
divorced. Middle Georgia, with its pines, its warm climate and its red clay, reminds her of South Africa, she said, adding that what's interesting to her about her life is "having lived in two cultures."
She grew up near Durban on the South African coast, where she learned to love the sea. "Our house looked over the ocean, and I spent a lot of time on the beaches and grew to love it," she said.
At 21, she wanted to meet her American father, and flew to the United States after he sent her a
round trip ticket. The trip was the beginning of an adventure that's still going on, she said.
She traveled widely as a flight attendant for Pan Am, but found the job much "like working as a waitress in a fast-food place." '
She arrived in Middle Georgia nine years ago when her then-husband was teaching at Mercer University. And it was here that she began canoeing—one of her favorite pastimes—and became "hooked on psychology," obtaining her bachelor's degree from Mercer.
She is a family counselor at the Child and Adolescent Unit of the Central Georgia Comprehensive Community Mental Health Center, where she works with children up to age 18 and their families. "We have play therapy, individual and group therapy and family therapy," she said, "and when I'm able to make a difference in people's lives, it's a really energizing experience; I feel really blessed to be a part of the healing process.
"Working with kids is incredibly satisfying. Their problems are not as deep-seated, and you see changes fairly quickly."
A challenge she found especially rewarding in the past 18 months was helping spearhead the establishment of the Child Abuse Task Force here.
Now she would like to see the force initiate a treatment program for offenders, "either in the jails or in place of sentencing, or when they're released—somewhere along the line."
Her daily schedule includes a 2-mile run and a half-hour of yoga. "I'm hooked on yoga," she said. "I went on a yoga retreat for eight days in the Bahamas in 1981, and it had such an effect on me, I've been doing it ever since. And I felt a need to teach it.
There's a lot of interest in yoga in the community. She will begin teaching yoga in April in a team arrangement with yoga instructor Sheryl Towers.
This book has been eight years in the making. It is mostly a jumble of thoughts written down in old spiral notebooks and hidden in the bottom drawer underneath various manuals for software packages and hardware long since turned obsolete.
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