I feel like I’m creeping forward both with my physical health and with my personal trauma healing – coming out of deep freeze into greater aliveness. Slow but real progress. Stay tuned, and may you receive every possible flavor of support.
Here’s what I cover in this newsletter. It’s a bit long, feel free to jump around and read what interests you.
- Personal update – navigating the moment
- Safe and Sound Protocol; Rest and Restore Protocol
- Couples work
- Longer sessions
- New individual trauma healing clients
Personal update – navigating the moment
First, a few milestones.
Today (Feb 5) is 40 years from the day my first child was born.
And I just did the math, and New Years Day just over a month ago marked the time when all of my children are now older than I was when I birthed my youngest child. There’s something comforting in that. They are four brilliant adults more equipped than I ever was to meet this life and this world.
Nicole, Jonathan, Felix, and Melody, I am very proud of all of you.
Now a much less remarkable milestone. When I opened up Mailchimp to put together this newsletter I noticed that I have exactly 1000 contacts. Which doesn’t mean anything, but it felt like an interesting coincidence with my coming in to compose a newsletter for the first time in ages.
I feel like a voice crying from the wilderness, which is to say I feel like I’ve been in the wilderness. And I know I’m not alone in that. The escalated state violence in the USA feels shocking and confusing to many people I talk to. And there are so many frightening, violent, and difficult things happening both locally and globally, on top of whatever is happening in each of our individual lives and families.
So in me, there’s a strong impulse to hide and hibernate. Let me find a safe quiet place and just burrow in and rest there for an indeterminate period of time.
I know that just hiding and hibernating – covering my eyes and not looking at the horror – is not a long term sustainable posture to take. If we pretend that the bad things are not happening, we become part of the allowance and invitation for more of the same. Conversely, each of us can’t really show up alive, healthy and dynamic to play our part in resistance and recovery when we just keep staring and in so doing remain in shock, freeze, and alarm.
So how do we – how do I – balance a powerful and humble awareness about the horrific things that are happening – and a continuing interest and curiosity about what is my most useful and appropriate role in meeting them – with real and effective self-care, joy, ease, and nurturance? How do I do both in a good way that leaves me nurtured, supported and protected, and also connected and caring in real ways?
I know that for me, one of the ways to bring my gifts to the present moment is by offering resources, perspective and the modeling of wise, compassionate and aware centeredness. Being me: alive, breathing, hopeful, loving, generous, and grounded despite the challenges inside and out. And offering resources, perspective and modeling to you so that you can do more of the same.
I feel like I haven’t been doing such a great job of that in recent months. I’ve been pretty absent from social media and I’ve been feeling contracted and stressed in my body and in my life.
And here’s where it gets tricky. There’s a place in me that feels an obligation to give more and that then pushes me, trying to make myself give more. “I have to give, I have to give more, I have to take care of people.” And woven into that ultimatum is stress and tension, which is totally at odds with what I want to be offering folks in the world.
So I’m sitting in this place of humble curiosity asking: “How can I remain in a place of gentleness in myself, yet show up in a very real way to offer support and containment to other humans navigating the stresses of these times?”
And I am guessing that many of you are asking similar questions, whether or not they are consciously articulated in your minds. Here we are, in these moments. Who do we be? What do we do?
I don’t have “the answer” to those questions.
But here are some things I think I know:
We are better equipped to meet our lives when we are connected to our bodies, in whatever way and to whatever degree is available to us.
For those of us who have racing thoughts and racing energies, we are better equipped to meet our lives when we are able to gently slow down, in whatever way we can do that. Slowing down doesn’t necessarily mean doing less physically, it can be doing the same things with our bodies but doing them from a softer place, perhaps by remembering that we are loved, perhaps by noticing our breath, perhaps by utilizing a religious or spiritual practice.
For those of us who might tend to be numb, frozen and immobile, we might be supported by moving our bodies more, but doing so consciously more slowly and gently, perhaps dancing our way across the floor and up and down the steps. And as I begin to consciously and gently dance myself off the couch and toward my tasks, of course I will forget and go back to my default way of moving. But if we try and try again, eventually our default mode will shift a bit, or a lot.
We are better equipped to meet our lives when we make a point of noticing things that please or delight us and by pausing – even for 3 seconds – to let that delight land in our bodies, to let a smile show up on our faces at this particular bit of loveliness here in the midst of it all.
For me, I hope that I will be more present and visible in the coming weeks than I have been for the last while. Please know that however visible I am – or am not – I sincerely wish for you hope, life, connection, and gentle unfolding/unraveling that comes with useful insights and ways forward in all the areas of your life.
Safe and Sound Protocol/Rest and Restore Protocol
The Safe and Sound Protocol is a bunch of filtered music that nudges or invites your body to adopt a new relationship to safety and to threat.
The Rest and Restore Protocol is a bunch of filtered music that nudges or invites each of your body systems to be less rigid and invites your body systems to be more in harmony with the other systems.
I am able to provide either or both of these at a low cost to both clients and non-clients. If you are not my client and want access to either program, I want to do a one-hour discovery call to ensure that you have adequate support and self-awareness in place both to absorb anything that comes up in working with either protocol and to make good choices about the pace at which to use the protocol.
Here is the article on my website that goes into more detail about both protocols.
Here is the link to schedule an SSP/RRP discovery call.
Couples work
I am now available to work with couples, drawing both from the somatically based trauma work and parts work that I use in individual sessions and from the Relational Life Therapy work that I am currently training in.
There is an option for a “Couple’s Discovery Call” on my scheduling page. A couple’s discovery call is an hour long to leave enough time for both members of the couple to have time to share and ask questions. The cost is the same as for an individual discovery call at $50, and the cost is then applied to your first session.
The current rate for couple’s sessions is the same as for individuals, $150 – $250 per session hour. I offer both 60-minute and 120-minute sessions.
Because I am in training, I will work with some couples at a rate of $50 per session hour, with the sessions being recorded for me to potentially show peers or mentors as part of my learning and certification process.
Here is the link to schedule a couple’s discovery call.
Longer sessions
When working with couples, 2-hour sessions can be more effective than single hour sessions. I can also do longer sessions with individuals. If you are a current or former client and would like to schedule a 2-hour session for either individual or couples work, here is the link to schedule.
I am also open to doing sessions of other differing lengths or doing intensives, consisting of multiple sessions over a 2-3 day period.
And for any current or former client, if you have been planning to schedule with me, here is the link, so you don’t have to make your way to my website to find it.
Link to schedule any discovery call or a one-hour session of any sort
New individual trauma healing clients
In addition to couples’ work, I am also accepting new individual clients.
Here is the link to schedule an individual discovery call.
May you have the best possible day, week, month, and season.
With respect and gratitude for you being you in the world,
Blesssings,
