I just moved away from the community I’ve loved for 17 years to follow my partner, Jeff, to a new job in Sonoma County. That means losing daily contact with my neighbors, including my next door neighbor, who does IFS parts processing with me over coffee. It means...
It’s not your fault if nobody ever taught you how to be in a healthy relationship. If you grew up in a house with at least one selfabsorbed narcissistic parent who didn’t model a healthy, balanced relationship for you. Or even worse, if one of your caregivers was a...
As I explained in my blog about IFS-informed Dating and Dating The Day Democracy Died, I learned a ton about myself and my own parts by going on about thirty first dates before I wound up with my current partner Jeffrey Rediger, who I met at a trauma conference we...
When I embarked upon my online dating experiment in January 2021 and went on about thirty first dates, I took advantage of the opportunity to write about all my dates and notice which parts of me showed up on each date. I thought I had a pretty stable sense of self...
Before the pandemic, I’d been intentionally single because I was in a phase of trauma healing recovery that needed me to focus on my own needs and healing. My inclination towards codependent love addiction and making someone else’s needs matter more than my own was...
Kids can grow up with developmental wounds that put them on one end of the unhealthy entitlement spectrum or the other. On one end, kids grow up too entitled. They feel entitled to things they’re not actually entitled to, and this can put them at risk of...
It's three days until the 5 year anniversary of lockdown for my hometown. On March 16, 2020, the San Francisco Bay Area was one of the first to close everything. I remember the weirdness viscerally. One luxury remained. Since I live at the beach, I was allowed to...
I spent the morning today planning curriculum for Mothering As Medicine with pediatrician and ACESAware trauma educator Rachel Gilgoff, MD. We were commiserating on the sorry state of affairs in the mental health world when it comes to adequate trauma screening,...