You can always have another. Firstly, you don’t know that for certain. Secondly, they wanted this child. The prospect of another somewhere down the road doesn’t mitigate that loss. Now you have an angel watching over you (or God must’ve wanted your baby in heaven). While this may be comforting to some people further along […]
In addition to being a social worker and family therapist, I am a loss doula. Loss doulas are a little different from labor doulas. A loss doula supports people who are miscarrying, having a stillbirth, or whose child is not expected to live long after birth. When I’ve talked to people about this aspect of […]
My dog, Oliver, will be two on March 20th. (And, yes, he will be having a party, but he’s a party all by himself, every day. In the words of Miss Piggy, he’s “a solo Mardi Gras!”) We’ve had him since he was 2 months old, and I’ve learned a lot about myself, my “parenting” […]
Grief is a peculiar thing in some cultures. In the United States, the majority (white, Protestant) culture struggles with grief. We expect grief to be contained in practice, time, and scope. When people spend “too long” in their grief, we pathologize them. The criteria proposed for Persistent Complex Bereavement are culturally bound, but we know […]
Tuesday Thoughts: Living in the in-between Recently, I’ve been talking to people about the gray area, that in-between where things are both, rather than either-or. In Dialectical Behavior Therapy (or DBT, for short), significant time is given to this subject. In fact, the first word, “dialectical,” means “the process of thought by which apparent contradictions […]
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, by Brené Brown This is a book that I listened to on audio. (Sometimes spending an immense amount of time in the car can be positive!) For those unfamiliar, Brené Brown is a PhD in Social Work whose research primarily focuses […]
For several years now, I’ve been a supervisor of pre-licensed social workers and marriage & family therapists working on their two years of post-graduate training. Over the past year or so, I’ve realized that there often arises a theme for the supervision I do each week. This past week’s theme was community. Community connections keep us […]
Lately, I’ve been talking a lot about boundaries, especially as people set their intentions for the New Year. As a refresher, here are some healthy boundary reminders: It is not your job to fix others. It is okay if others get angry. It is okay to say no. It is not your job to take […]
I watched a lot of PBS in general when I was a kid, and I loved Mr. Rogers. One of the great things about Mr. Rogers is that he really normalized feelings for kids. Too often I have seen parents treat their children as “little adults,” not understanding that we are not born “knowing how […]
