Christmas can be a lot when you’re experiencing and healing from religious trauma. We experience heightened emotions, fear, anxiety and the weight of people’s expectations. Triggers can be more intense, from carols in the supermarket to painful memories associated with church or harmful practices and beliefs. Loneliness, inner conflict and
An image took my breath away last week. It was of a baby doll in a manger made of rubble. Broken chunks of cement and rocks, debris and wood surrounded by figurines. It was the nativity scene of a Church in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. The place where
We heal powerfully when we can find practices and rituals that have meaning for us. When we connect with people who’ll help us carry some of the load and reflect back to us that we belong. These signal to our bodies that we can move through our pain to healing. The body keeps the score but can know relief in connection, to ourselves and our community.
It’s almost December, we’re all tired. Word to the wise, don’t believe everything you think. Especially when you’re tired. It’s like driving drunk. You are not your thoughts. Thoughts are fragments, information, data, collections of images from past experiences. They aren’t your intuition. They aren’t necessarily true. And they can
Here’s a list of symptoms: Fatigue or illness Cynicism Despair Irritability Reduced productivity Feelings of hopelessness Exhaustion Nightmares Re-experiencing an overwhelming event Anxiety Avoidance of people or activities Persistent anger and sadness. What do you think they are describing? They could be used to identify Trauma and Burnout. They look
My dreams of saving the world started early, were stirred by making a difference, being part of movements for change and helping where I saw need. And if I’m honest I wanted to be like Penelope Cruz in the movie Sahara. I liked the idea of travel and adventure. As
Collectively, we’re in survival mode at the moment. Our nervous systems are firing and we’re either hypervigilant and unable to switch off, or in functional freeze, disassociated. We’re not made to be able to cope with what we’re seeing play out on the global stage and it feels hard to
Grounded is permission to breathe, to pause and reflect on roles that may need to be looked at again in creative ways. When we’re burnout in any role, we can start to see the world differently, and, we set up the potential to hurt others.
I remember the first time felt like Dorothy pulling back the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. One of the things I loved the most about church and my experiential faith was feeling what I would have once called the presence of God. Light and cathartic, releasing, freeing, life-affirming. Usually
