You Are Not Sauce
If we are to move toward positive change in our communities and culture, we need you at full strength. Do not allow anyone or anything reduce you.
Blog
Lessons From an Autumn Walk
Hard autumn winds don't just blow away leaves; They can also blow away the things in our lives that no longer belong. Listen to find out what else trees can teach us about transformation and healing.
Tree Inspired Problem Solving (A Second Look)
Many times when I start to feel wobbly about current or imagined future circumstances, I look to the trees. In addition to giving off an amazing energy, I’m struck with the reality that many of the trees I encounter have been standing here for centuries. We have changed and challenged their landscapes again and again, and yet, they are still here. As we move into literal Winter, and also a time in our life as a Nation that is likely to be quite challenging, I encourage you to carefully consider the trees...
Truly Thankful (But not for Thanksgiving)
“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.” George Bernard Shaw... Today is the day when many people in the United States celebrate Thanksgiving. Like many of you, I will be sharing a collaborative meal and what should be some good connection time with some of my family. I am thankful for that. I’ve had quite a few not so stellar holidays in my life. I will tell you though, I do not honor this day as “Thanksgiving...”
Keep Calm, Andante On
The term “Andante” is a musical tempo. An Andante is a moderately slow, gentle pace. If you listen to the beginning of Carl von Weber’s "Andante e Rondo" you can hear what I mean. Notice how it just keeps rolling on, with a lilt here and lilt there? That’s Andante. 14 years ago, a different kind of Andante came into my life in the form of floofy little rescued “accidental” Lhasapoo. Since my daughter and I are both musicians we wanted to give him a musical name. We decided on Andante, and called him Dante for short. He has always just kept rolling on with a little lilt step here and there. That’s our Dante...
Tune Up
Not so long ago, we were all forced into a relationship that took precedence over many of our human relationships, including our relationship with ourselves. This relationship demanded the energy that belonged to other relationships, much like an affair. We all had a kind of forced affair with a pandemic. Just like we do in long term relationships with humans, we made compromises in order to do it well. We let go of things we like to do, the way we dress and spend our leisure time; The things that define and distinguish us. Now that we have broken up with the pandemic, (hopefully for good,) it’s time to reassess the things we’ve given up.
Givers, Takers, Transactionalists and Unspoken Rules
Have you ever thought you had one kind of relationship with someone only to feel burned as you discover they had a totally different understanding of what you were to each other? Let's get up under some of those disconnects and offer a different way forward.
Guest Appearances by Grief
"When we lose everything; When our stability is literally washed away, there is no help that will seem like enough... Trauma and grief are most often entwined. As such, in the aftermath of disasters, most of us do some iterations of Jack Worden's "Four Tasks of Mourning..."
SPECIAL EDITION: Hurricanes, Trauma, Epigenetics & Healing
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!
Healing v. Cure
“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...
Tell Me a Story, Part 3
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...
Chocolate Chip Cookies & Resilience
“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 & Identity
“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:...
Balancing Worlds
“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...
Unboxing Bodyism, Part Two
“ 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...
Unboxing Bodyism, Part One
“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 from Knowledge
“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...
Healing, Step Two: Apologize
“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...
Healing, Step One: Grieve
“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...
The 7 Steps to Healing
“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...
An Open Letter to the Not Good Enough Child
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...
Black History
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...
The Transformational Power of Life Mission
“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...
Seeing What We See
“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...
Listening First
“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...
Growing Up the USA: From Reactive to Responsive
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...
A Father’s Prophecy
“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...
The Power of Loving (…and the Lovings that made it happen)
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...
Practicing Wild Kindness (in the midst of turmoil)
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...
Why Bunnies Don't Get PTSI
“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...
When the Whole World Has PTSD
“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...
The Other F Word
“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...
What’s Your Butter Worth?
“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....
What I learned in therapy: Owning my spirituality in 2021
“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...
2020 Vision: A gift wrapped in barbed wire
“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...
Pieces of Peace (When it all falls to pieces)
“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...
No Matter What
“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...
The Table is Round: Lessons from “Mamala”
"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...
6s and 9s
[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...
Healing Community Trauma
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...
Finding Your Pando
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...
Why We Don't Report Sex Crimes
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...