Holding the Tension: Reflections of a Presidency in a Division at an Inflection Point

In this address, I offer reflections on my year as president of the Society of Counseling Psychology amid political backlash, institutional uncertainty, and organizational change. I explore how overlapping threats to education, research, and human dignity reshaped the priorities of my presidency, the field, and the division. The resultant lessons reflect the challenges of balancing vision with care, urgency with sustainability, and advocacy with stewardship. I invite us to consider what it means to remain faithful to our values when the conditions for putting them into practice change. Ultimately, this is an invitation to counseling psychologists to ask what this moment requires of our science, training, practice, leadership, and relationships with the communities we serve and represent. I proffer holding tensions as a shared responsibility: remaining connected, confronting difficult truths, and building a profession capable of meeting the demands of an uncertain future.