“It’s not down on any map, true places never are. ” — Herman Melville, Moby Dick Trauma affects everything. Even your dreams. In fact, nightmares are one of the  hallmarks of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and are often one of the symptoms that troubles people the most. If you experience trauma as an adult, the nightmares will stand out—mostly because  you know the difference between good dreams and nightmares. In many ways, I think it is much harder for people who experience trauma for the first time in adulthood because there is such a sense of loss of the safety that one o ..read more

Last week I set out on a hike across a ridge. The first few miles took me past three glacial lakes followed by a 1500-foot climb to the ridge. The lakes wove in and out of view. And now and again the Nenana River far below. The pathway was narrow most of the way and the sides of the trail were filled with flowers: white bunchberry, tall bluebells, artic rose and yellow potentilla. Occasionally forget-me-nots wove themselves in. The flowers arranged themselves in bouquets –bouquets that any wedding florist would have been jealous of—bouquets for the most spectacular events--bouquets for hours ..read more

“There comes . . . a longing never to travel again except on foot.” — Wendell Berry, Remembering There is a Slow Food Movement. Why isn’t there a Slow Healing Movement? The Slow Food Movement is an international movement, started in Italy, that seeks not only to preserve a life affirming tradition of long, satisfying meals, but also to strengthen the entire ecosystem that supports it:  food, eating, farming, family and a healthy way of life. Have you noticed that everything is now about speed? We don’t have time to do anything anymore. Apparently, according to a recent NYT article, we do ..read more

I have heard so many people say things like, “It’s too late for me to heal what happened” and “There’s no one who could help me” or “I’m too old to get help for this.” These statements are some of what has motivated to write about trauma and to create a better understanding about healing from trauma. I believe it is harder to heal from trauma the older you are—but not because you are old. As I have described in an earlier blog, repeated trauma or long term trauma is not one trauma. It is really 3 forms of trauma. The first form of trauma is the trauma that you experienced—the ‘what did happen ..read more

You are hereby invited, encouraged—NEEDED—to change the world. Not the whole world, just a piece of it. Just the piece that you can reach. That you can see. That you can pick up and carry. And maybe this isn’t so much an invitation to make change so much as it is a plea for you to value and honor the changes that you make in the world every day. Every time you share your love. Every time you experience joy. Every time you bring that bit of joy to your work or your relationships. It always seems that someone bigger, or more important should be making the change. It seems like in order to make ..read more

It wasn’t any angel who hovered, wings high, upright body, head bowed, not in prayer, so much as attention. But really, any blessing in a desert feels holy. A small spark of energy on a still hot morning where all I can find are fragments and pieces, no threads to weave them together. Sometimes just enough has healed to make the climb. Sometimes the path through the burning sand gives way to water and a grove of palms. Sometimes when it seems you can’t take one more step you realize that it’s breathing and friendship that will always save you— and you remember to have faith that the deep ..read more

A spring rain is falling on my garden this morning. It is lush and green, and it is a really different garden than the one I planned and created at the start of the pandemic. For the three years of Covid my little urban garden was both sanctuary and therapy. When I moved in it was a scruffy backyard with some raised beds. I watched Gardener’s World on YouTube and sketched new perennial borders. I combed through seed catalogs buying too many seed packets, and then growing 1000’s of seedlings under lights in the winter. I planted hundreds of Spring bulbs. I planted native flowers and perennials ..read more

The outside world often makes healing from trauma seem like a linear path. You find someone to talk to and you just tell your story. But talking about trauma isn’t easy, and telling your story is almost never linear. Traumatic memory, as I have written about before, is fragmented—and the experience of trauma fragments the actual experience—the feelings, the thoughts, the images. So in retelling it, it often comes back in pieces, not paragraphs. When you start getting words out it can feel precarious. Last summer I sat by the water where I am spent some time writing on the coast of Maine. That ..read more

  A mourning dove perches low sunlight gold on cold stone, while rock sleeps, the faithful wait for a sign of life below. Hide and seek, lost and found-- spring’s miracles are waiting games —but really, who has forty days to pray to the frozen ground?   I now move too slow, like everything, I am learning to walk again, or is it the first time?   Quietly growing new bones. The old gods never had patience-- but I learned to wrap myself in persistence— my grandmothers called it love— and on this cold morning on my walk at the edge of the path, I was blessed-- through scattered ..read more

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn” — Ralph Waldo Emerson Out of small things, big things grow. Out of one small change, many changes can come. Healing happens because you say one word, you make one move, you try one more time. An acorn produces an oak, which in a good year can produce 70,000 – 150,000 acorns. One seed. One tree. Exponential change.  Exponential change. But not immediate change. Oaks take a long while to grow. They are lovely young trees, but you don’t get the full effect for at least a decade, sometime two. But they are growing every day. And it is hard ..read more