In many professional fields, including counselling and education, there have been significant efforts to bring practice and research closer together. However, for each situation and each new practice problem and responsive research question, there is bridging to be done. This paper takes the form of an autoethnographic essay: it tells a story of the first author’s engagement in a small research project that offered opportunities to negotiate her way toward collaboration and respect as a researcher in her own community. As a school counsellor, she held concerns for the positioning of a small group of Pasifika students in the school. This research aimed to consider how the school might do better in serving the educational interests of these students and their families. The article focuses on the shaping effects of the research for the first author’s professional and personal life. Its argument is that her experiences as researcher have profoundly shaped the counsellor it is possible for her to be.