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Navigating the Holidays
The winter holiday season is upon us. Families and friends will soon gather around full dinner tables and make themselves comfortable in warm living rooms. Smells of pot roasts, root vegetables, mulled wine, cinnamon, and evergreens will fill the air. The cold, dark days will be slightly thawed by the light of connecting with loved…
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Cuffing Season
The nights are getting colder and longer as we welcome November and slip past daylight savings time. Several weeks remain until the winter solstice but cuffing season has begun – the time of year when people might temporarily couple up to endure the cold, dark winter together. All animals make seasonal changes to ensure survival…
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Wellness when part of you doesn’t want it
Wellness is not something we feel all the time. It is not a permanent end state that we reach with enough therapy and exercise and self-care. Wellness comes and goes, and even coexists with sickness and suffering. Instead of a clear linear path, wellness is a direction we choose in the tiniest of moments that…
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The Medicalization of Trauma: PTSD
“Trauma” is Greek for wound. Us humans are resilient; and we are also soft, sensitive, and deeply socially connected creatures. We sustain physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual trauma over the course of our lives, simply from living on Earth. When we experience trauma, no matter the type, it can be integrated into our systems or…
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Sexual consent part 3: Offerings for greater connection
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The first two articles in this series discuss our current framework for sexual consent, where it comes from and how it fails to move us toward better sex and sexual justice. This final piece asks, How else could we look at sexual consent? It explores attunement, embracing uncertainty, and…
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Sexual consent, part 2: Where our current model limits us
This article is the second in a series examining sexual consent. Check out part 1 published earlier on my blog. A semester prior to volunteering as a Peer Health Educator, I took a class called RAD: Rape Aggression Defense. It was recommended for freshmen and only female students were allowed. We learned and practiced self-defense…
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Integrated Counseling 