In Defense of Couples Therapy: Getting Help is a Sign of Strength, Not Failure
Seeking couples therapy isn't admitting defeat. It's declaring war on complacency.
Sleep Hygiene: A Therapist's Guide to Better Mental Health Through Better Sleep
Sleep isn't just about physical rest—it's one of the most powerful tools we have for supporting mental health, emotional regulation, and overall wellbeing.
The Liberation of Post-Menopause: Embracing Your Most Powerful Years
Post-menopause isn't the consolation prize after your "real" life ends. It's not about gracefully accepting decline or making peace with being invisible. It's about stepping into potentially the most liberated, authentic, and powerful phase of your entire life.
Let's talk about what that actually looks like.
Beyond Symptom Management: Building a Life That Honors Who You're Becoming
This isn't another list of supplements to take or foods to avoid. While those things can be helpful, they miss the bigger picture. Real thriving during menopause means building a life that reflects your authentic values, needs, and desires – not what you think you "should" want or what worked for you in previous decades.
The Emotional Landscape of Menopause: Reclaiming Your Power in a Youth-Obsessed Culture
While mainstream conversations about menopause focus on managing hot flashes or finding the latest supplement to keep us looking "youthful," they completely sidestep the profound emotional and psychological transformation that's underway. Menopause is about confronting some of the deepest questions of human existence while living in a society that pretends aging doesn't have to happen.
Menopause 101: Understanding the Basics of This Life Transition
Menopause is one of the most significant biological transitions a woman will experience, yet many of us enter this phase with surprisingly little knowledge about what to expect. This article covers the fundamentals: what menopause is, the stages, and the wide range of symptoms that are possible. We also explore the various healthcare providers who can support you during this journey.
For Further Study: Environmental Grief Sources and References
An extensive list of resources for further study on environmental grief, including both Western approaches and other cultural frameworks: research, therapy approaches, Indigenous concepts and knowledge, and more.
Expanding Our Understanding: Alternative Frameworks for Environmental Grief
Western psychology is beginning to recognize environmental grief as a legitimate response to ecological destruction, but other cultural frameworks have long understood the deep emotional connections between humans and the natural world.
Understanding Environmental Loss as Disenfranchised Grief
The psychological impact of environmental grief is very real: anticipatory grief for future losses, feelings of helplessness and overwhelm, existential anxiety about the future of our planet, and painful disconnection from others who "don't get it." But environmental grief demonstrates psychological health, not pathology.
Navigating Pregnancy Loss as a Couple: When Grief Looks Different for Each Parent
When a couple experiences a pregnancy loss, each partner may experience and express their grief in profoundly different ways. Understanding how grief can manifest differently for each parent, and learning to navigate these differences together, can be crucial for both individual healing and relationship strength during this difficult time.
Disenfranchised Grief and Pregnancy Loss: Understanding Your Valid and Natural Response
The loss of a pregnancy—whether through miscarriage, stillbirth, or other circumstances—brings profound grief that can feel overwhelming and isolating. Understanding the concept of disenfranchised grief can help explain why this loss may feel particularly challenging to navigate in our society.
The Reality of Pet Loss Grief
The grief you feel when your animal companion dies is real, profound, and deserving of recognition—even if the world around you doesn't always understand.
When History Becomes Personal Loss: Historical Trauma and Disenfranchised Grief
Grief about historical atrocities or ongoing systemic oppression represents one of the most misunderstood forms of disenfranchised grief in our society.
When Your Grief Doesn't "Count": Understanding Disenfranchised Grief
Disenfranchised grief occurs when society doesn't acknowledge your right to grieve a particular loss. Your pain is real, your sense of loss profound, but the world around you may minimize it, ignore it, or expect you to "get over it" quickly.
You Are Here to Risk Your Heart
“You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth.”
Journaling, Part Three: Overcoming Obstacles and Making the Practice Your Own
If you want to try journaling but feel inhibited by that persistent voice insisting your journal should be aesthetically pleasing or filled with profound insights, I encourage you to keep experimenting. That voice is standing between you and a potentially transformative practice.
Journaling, Part Two: Tools, Methods, and Finding What Works for You
I have a strict policy against buying blank books that feel too expensive or precious; I simply don't want that kind of pressure. Journals are tools, not objects of reverence. A journal should be like a hammer or a spatula — you want a tool that fits the task at hand, not one so intimidating that you can't even begin to use it. The best journal is the one you’ll actually use.
Journaling, Part One: A 27-Year Love Affair
Journaling has been my most faithful companion through decades of life's twists and turns. During times of anxiety or grief, my journal offered refuge — a judgment-free space where my raw, unfiltered thoughts could live. I'll never forget the day I found an old black-and-white Composition Book during a painful breakup. As I flipped through the pages filled with my own handwriting, I was stunned. The relationship problems crushing me now were documented there in my own words — five years earlier, during our first months together. Finding that journal became more than an eye-opening moment. It created a through line, connecting present-me with past-me, reestablishing trust in my own inner knowing.
Alua Arthur: Why Thinking About Death Helps You Live a Better Life
“Death creates context for our lives… How we die creates the period at the end of the sentence but it is the period that makes it a sentence at all.”
Living in the Spirit of Friendship
“Couples need to learn to be friends, to live with each other in a spirit of friendship, to take the quality of friendship as a guide through the tangles we have made of love.”