Several years ago I got to hear Dr. Bruce Perry tell the story of a little boy named Jesse. I stood next to a potted tree in a crowded conference room as adrenaline perfunctorily coursed through my veins. That was my routine baseline back then. It was normal for my heart to beat like a…Read more What Happened
mental health
Heart to Heart
Pardon the bleeding heart. Mercury’s in retrograde…again. But sincerely, the essence of all healing is finding our way back to Love. We can’t love anyone or anything, until we figure out how to love ourselves. Whether it was brutal, gruesome trauma, or the subtle erosion of moving from a secure and nourishing childhood into the…Read more Heart to Heart
Wondering
Or, is being trauma-informed the essence of enlightened Love, which is what some of us call God? But first, a little context. Back in the late 90’s two white, male doctors conducted a study out of Kaiser-Permanete and essentially discovered an irrefutable link between childhood adversity and adult health outcomes. The study, Adverse Childhood Experiences,…Read more Wondering
Gold
Binge watching global human excellence, and this breath of pure and priceless wisdom is the best of it all. My therapist is also a sports psychologist. We were talking about the intersections of trauma, threshold anxiety, and the general terror that comes from attempting to be our authentic self (for me anyway…my inner child constantly…Read more Gold
Sip
Recovery forces us to admit, out loud, to an unconditional witness, the secrets we keep, even to ourselves which previously allowed us to justify various dysfunctional behaviors that had once served the function of saving our lives but would eventually kill us, literally, figuratively, or both. I realized my eating disorder had turned my body…Read more Sip
Radically accepting people and the world as it is, as they are, empowers everyone and everything to exist in the dignity of their absoluteness. Tornados, oppression, open wounds; they’re all on, albeit violent, trajectories back to Love and, we don’t have to stand in their path as energetic ramparts. Who can argue with the will…Read more
Solstice
Hurting ourselves or hurting others is a knee-jerk reaction to being hurt. Survival reflex til we wake up, take the reigns and say: Enough. Only to discover that’s not enough either. Solstice under a full moon is a good time for releasing the need to hurt and replace it with Love. How many times do…Read more Solstice
Imagine
Imagine a society where everyone understood and knew how to appropriately respond to wounded behaviors, symptoms of stress, mental illness, grief, fear, pain. Instead of attempting to get revenge, enable, shame, punish or publicly humiliate each other for our faults, we’d surround each other with compassion, encourage the building of strengths, promote social learning, practice…Read more Imagine
Vessels of Light
Many moons ago I had an art show in an actual gallery. Truth be told, one of my very dear professors from college opened their own gallery. Me? But I'm not...The opportunity felt like a gracious, encouraging favor. This professor also helped me realize my career and gave me hypnotherapy to overcome my fear of…Read more Vessels of Light
Book Review: Angels and Assassins
Admittedly, I'm cheating a little in the alphabetizing of this series but, I finished this book yesterday and it's all too relevant. Angels and assassins are not mental health conditions; they're metaphors explaining a hopeful neurobiological discovery in the most recent book by scientific journalist, Donna Jackson Nakazawa. I'm a huge fan. What do all…Read more Book Review: Angels and Assassins
Born in Providence 