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“We are not thinking machines, we are feeling machines that think.”  Antonio Damasio, MD, PhD in Descartes’ Error. We all come into the world with our unique temperament. Teachers have long understood that different children learn differently and respect these differences by giving students a variety of ways to express their understanding of concepts and... Read More

I’m a long time fan of The Ladies’ #1 Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. It is set in Botswana and to read any book in this series feels like a brief vacation to an exotic locale every time. At the same time, the characters feel familiar and neighborly so it is a win-win. I... Read More

I’m going to make an argument and a challenge today. I’ve spent a lot of my career trying to teach people about what it takes to make changes to old patterns of behavior. I was doing the best I could with the information available to me. When I announced my intention to go into counseling,... Read More

I just got back from a rich cultural experience. I spent 4 days with 200 people at a summer camp facility in the Hill Country of Texas. Beautiful spot. Saw the Total Eclipse. I was there with an art collective dedicated to remembering what human connection and communication felt like before Wall Street and Hollywood... Read More

I’ve had a health scare recently and have noticed myself doing things about “the future”. Thinking this far ahead is new to me. I typically struggle to hold in mind the idea that there is a vacation scheduled 6 months from now. So, as I reflect on this, I’ve decided to simply embrace it and... Read More

Most of us approach parenthood with an idea of what kind of parent we hope to be. Usually, we look to our family of origin for our role models, taking what seemed to work for us and putting aside what we, as children, really didn’t like. Sometimes, however, we look at our parenting and resolve... Read More

If you’re familiar with my earlier columns, you know that I think you are highly likely to be the most important person in the life of your foster, kinship, or adopted child with an early trauma history. As a reminder, I add the word early because when prenatal drug exposure, prolonged extremes of the birthmother’s... Read More

The holidays are upon us. Many foster, kinship, and adoptive parents or guardians strive to respect the culture and religious traditions of the children in their care. This is not an easy thing to do! I think about how my family of origin celebrated the holidays (one Christmas Eve spent at a motel eating Kentucky... Read More

As I sit down to write this morning, I’m listening to an interview with Barbra Streisand on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She’s promoting her new memoir. She was huge when I was a teenager. I love some of her songs but was never a serious fan. Until this morning… She said something that struck... Read More

I don’t want to bore you with stories from my childhood but, suffice it to say, there was plenty of trauma to go around for me and my 3 sisters. The 4th birth was even blessed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Not fun. I do, however, want to bring a few things to your attention that... Read More