Content Note: Ableist language used as negative examples. As we walked along, my friend tripped over a raised bit of sidewalk. “Pick up your feet!” she scolded herself. I could imagine her four-year-old self being dragged by the hand as her mother scolded her in exactly those words a half-century earlier. Oppression by default We… Read More
Articles
Offer a Collaborative Story
Jacinta realized she was angry about not being heard. She said to her friend Reya, “I’m mad about our translation project. I still think this idiom isn’t quite right.” Reya said flatly, “I disagree.” Jacinta took a deep breath and tried again. “I really appreciate that you did this translation. Your technical Spanish is much… Read More
Depression: Natural Response to Trauma
A heavy reluctance to get up in the morning. A weight presses down all day, makes it hard to move, squeezes the joy out of everything. Voices inside say, “Worthless. Shameful. Failure.” Tears, sadness, grief, despair. Emptiness. Hopelessness. A common narrative says that depression is caused by a malfunction of the body and brain, leading… Read More
Your Body Is Your Ally
It is painfully easy to blame our own bodies for trauma we endure. Perhaps if we had looked or acted differently, the trauma would not have happened. Afterwards, we want the body to just get over it instead of needing a long healing process. We disconnect from our bodies, and then feel surprised and betrayed… Read More
Embody Hunger, Embody Fullness
Trauma interrupts and confuses our relationship with our bodies. To connect more directly with our bodies just as they are right now, we can bring more awareness to eating, hunger, and fullness. Soothing or stressful eating Babies eat for comfort as well as nourishment. So do growing children and adults. Eating is a fundamental sensory… Read More
Untangle Anniversaries
Some anniversaries are neutral. “Oh, that happened five years ago.” Some feel like an accomplishment. “Wow, I’ve had this job for three years already.” And then there are the ones that feel terrible. Trauma anniversaries might bring more abundant flashbacks and other PTSD symptoms. Anniversaries of loss might bring a resurgence of grief. We might… Read More
How to Resist Enough
The news is overwhelming these days. Hurricanes, wildfires, increasingly violent bigotry, decreasing access to medical care, war, genocide, environmental destruction. To secure our own survival and to be good people we want to do something, only it never seems like enough. How do we resist enough? How do we know that we are doing our… Read More
The Perils of Nice
Never take the last cookie. Avoid drama. Never tell people they are wrong. Wait for people to notice what you need. Smile at strangers. We have lots of rules about how to be nice, how to be liked. The details vary in each community, which can be surprising when you move to a new town…. Read More
Sit with Disappointment
The hardware store is out of the item we need. A friend did not show up when they said they would. The job went to someone else. The election went to the other candidate. Disappointments come in all shapes and sizes. How we handle them depends on our expectations, our inner resources and resilience at… Read More
Look into the Present
Trauma leads to chronic muscle tension as the body works to manage internal nervous system disruptions as well as external life disruptions. Our eyes are affected directly by muscle tension and indirectly by incomplete trauma responses. Light enters the eye through the pupil and is focused by the lens onto the retina in the back… Read More