Contemporary Sexuality - June 2008 - (Page 6)

Member Spotlight Margaret Goger, MSW (Wichita, Kans.) Member Spotlight is a monthly column offering an opportunity for AASECT members to get to know more about each other. Each month, a different member’s story will be introduced. If you would like to recommend someone to be interviewed for this column, please contact Hani Miletski, PhD, MSW, Membership Steering Committee chair, at Hani@DrMiletski.com. “Being on the radio has been a great marketing tool Men and women new to therapy have come for evaluations and said they felt they already knew me.” — Margaret Goger M argaret Goger’s first AASECT conference was in Las Vegas five years ago. She met Lori Buckley and Libby Bennett at the SAR they attended, and they’ve been friends and collaborators ever since. They reconvened in Tulsa and Kansas City to create the Sensual Enlightenment Program, a five-week group program for women to increase sexual self-efficacy. “I can’t think of anything I have done that made me feel so good about how women can work together for something professional and meaningful,” Goger says. Currently an AASECT-certified sex therapist, Goger wanted to earn certification before she attending her first conference. She had been getting supervision from Gerry Epp, at the Prairie View Center for Sexual Health in Newton, Kans. Epp, Marjean Harris, Michael Cranston and Amy Hammer have been among the therapists who meet twice a month for luncheons to talk about sex. Goger believes the energy and ideas of her colleagues in the Sex Issues Lunch Group at Prairie View had the biggest influence in helping her feel confident and at home in talking about and exploring sexual topics as a clinician. “These have been some of the best lunch discussions in my life,” she says. Goger has a private practice in Wichita, Kans. where she sees 25 to 30 clients a week. She specializes in individual and couples’ sexual concerns, relationship issues and addictions. She facilitates numerous workshops on sensual enlightenment for women, survivors of sexual abuse, as well as programs for increasing sensual connection with massage and tantra for couples. “I love what I do,” she says, “and get rewards from it on a weekly basis.” Six years ago, Goger was asked to be on a weekly classic rock, morning call-in radio show, as the consulting “on-air” therapist. “Being on the radio has been a great marketing tool, and I think it makes therapy in Wichita seem more accessible and less risky,” Goger says. “Men and women new to therapy have come for evaluations and said they felt they already knew me.” Goger went to Palomar College in California to be an orthodontist and then realized “I don’t do physics.” A few years after she moved to Kansas, she graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor degree in social work, while married, working and raising two children. “I’m pretty proud of that,” she says. She then continued with the MSW program at the University of Kansas, and received the Margo Schultz Gordon Award for Outstanding practicum for some of the programs she put together at the VA in Wichita. Goger currently serves on the AASECT Professional Education Steering Committee for Preferred Provider Approval. She is also the Kansas state leader and a member of the MidContinent Region Membership Committee, under Gretchen Fincke. Goger hopes to get regular correspondence going with members in her state this year. She co-developed the presentation given by Buckley and Bennett at the AASECT conference in St. Louis, in 2006, on Sensual Enlightenment Groups, and in 2007, Goger was part of the Private Practice panel presentation in Charlotte. Goger is the mother of a 22-year-old daughter and a 20-year-old-son — wonderful, witty people. She lives in the diverse and charming area of Wichita, called Riverside, with her black lab mix dog, Crash, and her two cats, Julius and Milton. Goger relates her worst professional moment, “when I had to leave the AASECT conference in St. Louis without making my presentation because my father died unexpectedly.” The next few months were filled with turmoil. “Right as I was returning from my father’s funeral, I kept getting middle-of-the-night calls from a distraught client and from law enforcement alerting me that my client was driving the countryside drunk, with a gun, planning to commit suicide. From the distressing calls around my father’s death and about that client, I developed a startled reaction to the ring tone on my cellphone. I finally changed it to ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love.’” Says Goger, “The last two years of my life have been fraught with difficult life events, but I have started 2008 with much optimism and energy, and the love of my life.” 6 Contemporary Sexuality www.aasect.org | June 2008 Vol. 42, No. 6 http://www.margaretgoger.com/ http://www.aasect.org

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Contemporary Sexuality - June 2008 Contents President’s Letter Member Spotlight Quick Hits: Sex in the News News of Members

Contemporary Sexuality - June 2008

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