It can be a tall order to stay informed about traumatic events like the recent hurricane, determine how we can be helpful, and not become traumatized in the process. Click here to find out more!
“We are cured when we no longer have disease. We are healed when we are restored to community.” (Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona ) Cured? Most religious faiths have some sort of tradition around asking their understanding of the Divine to heal people of this or that...
Psychiatrist, Neurologist and Lakota-Cherokee descendent, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, defines “healing” (as opposed to “cure,”) as being reconciled to community and to self. Storytelling in both Lakota and Cherokee traditions does exactly that. Stories remind us of what is true, support that healthy story of who we are, and remind us that we belong to something greater than just ourselves...
“To questions of life, chocolate gives an answer articulated in many chunks and flakes.” (Fabrizio Caramagna) Do you like chocolate chip cookies? Scotch tape? Do you like listening to music in your car? From the Ashes Toll House Cookies and their chocolate chips were invented...
“Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence.” (Peter Levine) Trauma Steals Imagination ME: Do you feel like drawing today? KID: Ok. ME: What do you want to draw? KID: I dunno. What should I draw? ME:...
“What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?” (George Eliot) Customer NonSupport I’ve had countless conversations about how “customer support” has dramatically deteriorated in the last four years. It’s maddening. While it was not uncommon to find ourselves...
“ I'll never try to give my life meaning By demeaning you But let me just say for the record I did everything that I could do I'm not saying that I am a saint I just don't want to live that way I will...
“God help you if you are a big girl, But too skinny is also your doom, Cuz everyone harbors a secret hatred, For the skinniest girl in the room; “So squint your eyes and look a bit closer I'm not between you and your ambition,...
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.” ( Anne Lamott) A Room with a Desk When I...
“We must apologize for the hurts we’ve caused.” (From “ Seven Steps to Healing” by Edgar Villanueva in Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides, second edition, copyright 2021, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, Oakland, CA ) Today we look at step two of Edgar Villanueva’s “Seven...
“We have to stop and feel the hurts we’ve endured.” (From “ Seven Steps to Healing” by Edgar Villanueva in Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides, second edition, copyright 2021, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, Oakland, CA ) As promised, this blog is the first installment...
“Mutual respect is the foundation of genuine harmony.” (the 14th Dalai Lama) I Went to a Conference and a Book Broke Out So there I was, watching the replay of a trauma summit segment, and this guy, Edgar Villanueva, started saying all of these things...
One of the most common repeated themes I’ve come across in a quarter century as a therapist is the childhood-instilled belief that we are Not Good Enough. In the limited scope of a child’s experience, the child assumes that the “big nostril people” know more...
None of us are free None of us are free None of us are free; when one of us is chained, None of us are free. (Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Brenda Russell) NOTE: When a Person of Privilege celebrates the accomplishments of People of Color...
“If we aim at nothing, we are sure to hit it.” No More Therapists I got some interesting feedback when I ended a blog the other week with the idea that increased community empathy would likely lead to a greatly reduced need for therapists, and...
“Trust yourself; You know more than you think you do.” (Anonymous) Seeing and Not Seeing As I mentioned in my last blog, ( “Why We Vacate” ) I recently spent some time at a very special cabin in the woods, ( Moonridge Cabin .) One...
“Listen to the wind; It talks. Listen to the silence; It speaks. Listen to your heart; It knows.” (Native American Proverb) “Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf.” (Anonymous) Letting Go of Linus’ Blanket As more and more painful and difficult things happen in...
Being reactive and screaming might feel cathartic in the moment, but sustainable change is born out of centered responsiveness. Inde-WHAT-ence Day? It’s interesting to me that we are about to celebrate another “Independence Day,” right on the heels of a Supreme Court decision that goes...
“Love involves a peculiar, unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.” (Diane Arbus) This Is Us Let me start by saying that I am one of those people; The ones who cried every week at the TV show, This Is Us , and are feeling ridiculous...
On June 11, 1967, I was seven and a half months old. On June 11, 1967, my husband, Amari, was six and a half years old. On June 11, 1967, “interracial marriage” was illegal in the Commonwealth of Virginia and 20 other states. If Amari...
I have a cousin who is a school-based Social Worker and Peaceful Parenting Coach, (>shameless plug< ** Confluence Parenting, LLC.) He’s married to a dedicated, creative, tenacious public school Math teacher. They are also parents to two totally awesome young boys. As hard as the...
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it.” Helen Keller How We Traumatize We humanfolk think we are SO smart! And yet, that very thinking gets in our way and makes things worse all the time! When people go...
“Even in times of trauma, we try to maintain a sense of normality until we no longer can. That, my friends, is called surviving. Not healing. We never become whole again - we are survivors. If you are here today, you are a survivor. But...
“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” (Lewis B. Smedes) Nice idea That’s a nice idea, isn’t it? It’s right up there with the quote attributed to St. Augustine, “Harboring resentment is like drinking poison and waiting...
“None are so empty as those who are full of themselves.” (Benjamin Whichcoat) The butter battle Imagine that you go to the grocery store. On the shelf, you see two packages of butter. The package on the left is in pristine condition, shiny and bright....
“Purposefulness is one of our most potent antidepressants.” (Tiffany Sankofa) When you think you’re walking in one direction, and then… Retirement was a year away. I started seeing Tiffany to help me transition to what I called a “life-giving retirement.” To tell the truth, I...
“Grief always comes bearing gifts. Unfortunately, they are sometimes wrapped in barbed wire.” Seeing clearly Welp… To be fair, I really did believe that 2020 was going to be a year of focus and clarity. I wasn’t wrong. I really wish it had been delivered...
“You find peace, not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.” (Eckhart Tolle) There’s that internal locus of control again Well thank you, Eckhart Tolle. Frankly, there are an awful lot of circumstances of our...
“Have a great day… No matter what.” Why suffer? I have been known to close texts and email exchanges with, “Have a great day… no matter what.” It seems that many people think I’m trying to be cute. I’m actually supporting a much, much more...
"In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders." - Sheryl Sandberg The Psychology… not the Politics Fair warning: This blog is about the other week’s Vice-Presidential debate, but it’s not about election politics. I thought you should know that...
[caption id="attachment_6052" align="alignnone" width="618"] (Illustration by Jazmyne Craig and Tiffany Sankofa) [/caption] “I accept chaos. I’m not sure chaos accepts me.” (Bob Dylan) What month is it? I’m going to share an embarrassing story with you. It’s only fair – people share their embarrassing stories...
I've been doing trauma work clinically for over 21 years. The arcs of personal trauma and community trauma are, not surprisingly, entirely parallel: There comes a time when we are strong enough, well-enough endowed at every level that we can boldly refuse our Perpetrator's definition...
There is a colony of 47,000 Quaking Aspen trees located in Fishlake National Forest, in Utah that have been gauged to be around 80,000 years old. 80 ---- > THOUSAND years! (See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree ) for more information and pictures. It's beautiful!) These trees have been...
I have worked with sexual abuse and rape survivors throughout my nearly 20 year career as a psychotherapist. I am currently working with a number of survivors who are being triggered by the latest Catholic church abuse revelations and the vitriol public fury fest over...