Was food restricted in your house? Was a parent ashamed of you because of your weight? Did you grow up hearing a parent expressing contempt for their own body or weight? If you were labelled fat as a child, were
Fat Shaming
I Love My Body
Did you wince when you read that? I love my body just as it is. It seems like a good idea to at least try to like our body and to honor its needs. Our relationship with our body is
Connection After Ordinary Trauma
“Safety is the absence of threat PLUS the feeling of connection.” Dr StephenPorges Somatic mindfulness practices allow us to track the actual mechanisms of disconnection. It makes complete sense that when we bump into stored trauma, we feel overwhelmed and
Don’t Make Me Into a Hashtag #BLM
“Change the culture.” Jackie Summers. “We’re living through a second Civil Rights movement. It started with the death of Trayvon Martin, and hit fever pitch last year with the murder of George Floyd. It isn’t enough. They. Keep. Killing. Us.
Anxiety Talking
There are many ways to release anxiety. We might practice yoga, go for a swim, do a breathing practice, or connect with a friend. When we’re jumping out of our skin, we need strong action to down-regulate our nervous system.
You Complete Me
We are conditioned to believe Hallmark channel ideas about romantic love. We are vulnerable to them because humans are hardwired to seek connection. This contrasts our own direct experience which is that people can let us down and hurt us.
What We Want – What We Need – What We Get
“You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well, you just might find. You get what you need.” Rolling Stones We want people to be careful with our tender hearts. We long to be seen and
Safety IS the treatment
“Safety IS the treatment.” In order to heal, we need to feel safe. Dr Stephen Porges defines safety as the absence of threat PLUS a feeling of connection. “Trauma is what happens inside us as a result of what happens to us.
Someday my prince will come?
We are conditioned to believe we are “less than” without a successful relationship as defined by the dominant culture that centers the nuclear family as the right kind of family. Heterosexual. Male and female parents with children. Someday my prince
Never tolerate dehumanization ~ Brené Brown
Human beings find it hard to practice violence against other human beings. Some people in power play on our fears and turn us against each other, deliberately dehumanizing people to justify hurting them: from Matthew Shephard (beaten to death in