Practices for Recovering Resilience
The Practice of Poignancy
Today, May 31, 2021, the last Monday in May, is celebrated as Memorial Day in the United States. Poignant, that the meaning of a holiday, begun in 1868 to honor the men and women who died in military service for this country, has come, for many of us, to signal the unofficial beginning of summer; […]
Imagine What We Could Build
I finished reading Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness last week, the 10th anniversary edition, the original staying at the top of the New York Times best-seller list for almost five years. For good reason. Widely and highly praised for its hard-hitting, unflinching clarity about the realities of […]
The Light in the Darkness
Yes, I do post a lot of poetry as both resource and refuge for resilience. As my friend Roger Housden, author of the Ten Poems to Change Your Life series (…to Set You Free, …to Open Your Heart, …for Difficult Times, etc.) says: Great poetry speaks truth in a universal language that crosses cultural boundaries […]
Pandemic Easing; Staying Woke to Confronting Prejudice
My last direct connection with Pepperdine University was with Louis Cozolino, a mentor for me about the neuroscience of attachment. His The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain and The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain provided great guidance in understanding the neurobiology underlying some of our most frustrating experiences […]
One Door Opens…Another Door Closes
I shared this moment last week: driving through Golden Gate Park, a squirrel suddenly ran in front of my car. I braked; he swerved and ran back the other way. He lived, and I was so grateful. That moment of euphoria lasted not even a full five minutes. Driving on, I came upon another squirrel […]
Rekindling the Spark
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by the spark from another person. – Albert Schweitzer I have been more than blessed by so many mentors pointing the way to so many resources for recovering resilience and well-being. My updated resilience for right now…and for the long haul links you to many. […]
Recovering from Pandemic Burnout and Fatigue…In Ways That Are Honest and Effective
Many years ago, when I finished writing the manuscript for Bouncing Back and pushed “send” on the computer, I checked in to see what I was feeling after a full year of drafting, editing, polishing…Nothing. I thought that was odd. I had worked so hard, the last month especially, to meet the publisher’s deadline. I […]
Joy Is an Act of Moral Resistance
“Joy is an act of moral resistance” is one of the wise gems I heard in the 2017 TED talk Three Lessons of Revolutionary Love in a Time of Rage by Valeria Kaur, a young American civil rights activist, lawyer, award-winning documentary filmmaker, author and Sikh faith leader, on the front lines of fighting hate […]
For Clinicians: Working with Traumatized Nervous Systems
So many folks are getting wrung out by the challenges of coping with a pandemic that doesn’t seem ready to quit. Whether people were ever traumatized before in their lives, many are experiencing a marked deterioration in functioning and well-being now. NICABM is offering its Treating Trauma Master series to help clinicians help clients resolve […]
The New Normal? Not So Fast…and Not So Easy
Yesterday’s post, Gone Fishin’, mentioned that I hit a wall last week and would show up in your inbox today re-grouped, re-Sourced, recovered, with an attempt at explaining, at least exploring, why. A health scare, resolved, nothing to worry about now, and I’m grateful for that. Profoundly. The wall was noticing that I wasn’t turning […]