Three Conventions That Never Happened

by Nichole Cross, Chapter President

I became president of this chapter in April of 2020. The world had shut down in March.

I had been volunteering with AMTA for fourteen years by then, in one capacity after another, and the presidency was the thing I had been working toward. I got there, and the apocalypse hit.

The National Convention was cancelled. Our annual meeting became a Zoom call. We stopped meeting in person entirely — and in person is the whole reason I am in this association. Meanwhile our Government Relations team and our lobbyist were working overtime, because the questions coming at us were not small ones. Therapists were arguing online about blood clots, about whether we would kill our clients, and about whether any of us should be working at all for a year. People were frightened. I was the president of the association; on the phone with the lawyer.

I cannot tell you how many times I cried.

2020, no convention. 2021, no convention. 2022, no convention.

Three years, two terms, and the pin that goes with this job never came because the room where it happens never opened.

I thought about quitting a hundred times. I am not exaggerating. What kept me in the chair was my husband, who absorbed more of those nights than anyone should have to, and a stubbornness I come by honestly. I had been on this ship too long to watch it sink. AMTA has real value nationally and more of it at the chapter level, where we actually touch the profession. The lobbyist we have and the education we can offer at a price therapists can afford; those exist because of what National gives this chapter. I was not going to be the one who let it go. So I stayed the course.

In August, in Denver, with our chapter leadership in the room, I was pinned for the first time. Third term.

I expected it to feel like a formality. It did not. It felt like freedom from the chains of the pandemic, and like a rebirth of what I am able to do for this chapter. For someone pinned in a normal year, a pin marks an office. For me it marks not quitting.

Here is why that matters to you and not only to me.

This is a lonely profession. You leave school and go into your own business or a busy practice, and the fellowship disappears. There is no one to ask about a complicated client, no one to trade technique with. The camaraderie is the first thing to go.

That is what this chapter is for; relevant education at a price you can afford, a room full of people who love this work the way you do, and a round table where therapists trade ideas in person again. These are the parts we lost, and the parts I intend to get back.

There is a lot of talk about AMTA online right now. Here is mine: we are here, and we are run by people not that different from you — therapists with full schedules who said yes to one thing. That is how every single one of us started. It does not take a board seat. It takes an hour. Come volunteer with us.

Nine of us went to Denver in August. What follows is what they brought home: where our profession is headed on AI and licensure, an honest first-timer's account, and a forty-year milestone I was proud to stand next to.

*Read on — then come find us.

~ Nichole Cross, Chapter President

*This message is part of the Fall 2026 Newsletter.