Blog

By Michaleen Doucleff, National Public Radio, June 29, 2021 Back in the fall, Michelle Shiota noticed she wasn't feeling like herself. Her mind felt trapped. "I don't know if you've ever worn a corset, but I had this very tight, straining feeling in my mind," she says. "My mind had shrunk." Shiota is a psychologist at Arizona State University and an expert on emotions. When the COVID-19 crisis struck, she began working from home and doing one activity, over and over again, all day long. "I...

By Agnes Chen, WBUR, June 25, 2021 When Jackson Morgan thinks about who he was at age 18 and 19 — before the pandemic — he puts his head down and pushes his feet into the sand outside his family's house on Plum Island. “The guy I was a year ago, I was very different. I mean, I was a hothead. I had anger issues and stuff,” Morgan says. “I would damn near blackout when I got really mad and start to fight, and I wouldn’t remember bits and pieces of it.” But the pandemic changed everything for...

By Sahaj Kaur Kohli, Ideas.Ted.com, May 28, 2021 Every one of us has mental health in the same way that every one of us has physical health. Yet despite the prevalence of mental health struggles, there is still so much stigma around them. Worldwide the leading cause of disability is depression, according to the World Health Organization, and in the US alone, nearly 1 in 5 of adults lives with a mental illness. As a mental health therapist-in-training and the founder of Brown Girl Therapy ,...

I need the most safety and hopeful possibilities for myself and who I am attached to. Then, having the ability for emotional connection, I both want to positively and don’t want to negatively, tell the children and innocents of the world, “Here is what I was doing this moment when you needed me.”

Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter June 2021 http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2021-06-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_June_2021.pdf Hi folks, June is NATIONAL PTSD AWARENESS MONTH I thought I would share a few of the resources that have...

You can't fail at self-care. If something isn't helpful, maybe you haven't yet found your own way.

La Maida Project is thrilled to share videos from our recent webinar series “Exploring the Role of Culture in Healing”. We had an great audience turn out and robust dialogue with our panel of guest speakers including Ken Epstein, PhD LCSW , leader in trauma-informed systems transformation, Anil Vadaparty , CEO of child-welfare agency McKinley, and Omid Naim, MD , integrative psychiatrist and founder of La Maida Project. In these webinars we discuss the role of leadership in trauma-informed...

The first time I invited a good friend not just over to but into my house, postvaccination , sans masks, I couldn’t even wait until she walked up to my door–I ran outside to greet her, and we tackle-hugged each other in the driveway. We both held on tight, the otherworldly buzz of a thousand cicadas in our ears, as we took turns exclaiming how good it was to see each other. We hadn’t hung out in person since January 2020, and of course I was looking forward to talking, sharing a meal,...

By Kristin Neff, Greater Good Magazine, June 14, 2021 How can we effectively bring about a more just world? Although it may not be obvious at first glance, self-compassion plays a key role in the quest to end sexism, racism, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression. By aiming compassion inward as well as outward, we can better confront the pain of injustice without being overwhelmed, and find the strength and energy to fight for what’s right. Self-compassion helps us cope by accepting our...

By Dennis S. Charney, STAT, June 15, 2021 O ne morning almost five years ago, a disgruntled former employee tried to kill me with a shotgun as I walked out of my local deli. The buckshot pellets from the blast pierced my right shoulder and chest; blood gushed from the wound. I learned later that the shot would have killed me had it landed a few inches to the left. I had studied trauma victims for decades to understand resilience and find new treatments for mood and anxiety disorders like...

Please find Linda K. Williams website, Caring and Capable Kids, with many resources for you and your families. Please click HERE: https://caringandcapablekids.com/caring-and-capable-kids/

June is Jesse’s birthday month. Each year, since my six-year-old son’s murder in the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in 2012, people from all over the world continue to come together in the form of concerts, 5K’s, and online events to honor, remember, and celebrate all the lives lost on this tragic day. In a recent interview with a reporter, as we were talking about my organization’s annual Month of Fun fundraiser, he exclaimed how amazed he was that Jesse’s spirit seemed to continue to...