A few months ago, I had the privilege of attending an annual conference called “A View from All Sides” hosted by the Children’s Trust, a family support organization in Massachusetts. The keynote speaker, Dr. Bruce D. Perry, spoke about the effects of empathy on the developing brain. He made some very important and fascinating points about the role of connection and relationships on our well-being. Through his research, he has studied the make up of the human brain as well as our societies approach to relationships and the importance we place on interacting with each other. As he described our…
Category: Blog
Grandparents Raising their Grandchildren: Support for Three Generations
Working in the field of human services in Massachusetts for the past 3 years has given me an understanding of the vast way in which community problems are intertwined. There are so many topics to discuss when it comes to looking at a community as a whole and breaking it down into manageable pieces. The purpose of the organization I work for on Cape Cod is to prevent child abuse and neglect by supporting families and building resources in the region. Through our work, we engage various social issues that a person may face. From family dynamics, domestic violence, poverty,…
More Than Talk: Approaching Child Sexual Abuse as a Public Health Problem
Many disturbing things occur that we wish didn’t take place. We worry, we discuss, we wonder why. How can this happen when I just want the world to be a good place? Why does something like this go on when it seems like everyone I know is just as bothered as I am by these problems? What we often fail to realize is that everything happens within an environment that supports it and allows it to occur, grow, or even flourish. A plant without water or sunlight, no matter how much it is a plant, will die because it does…
Violence and Values
The way people act and operate is constantly changing and shifting, forming and growing. What we have seen throughout history is a push and pull in this process. One significant area that is impacted by this is the ratio of violence to peace in any given culture. In the United States, public displays of violence have been on the rise over the past few years. This past week we witnessed the biggest mass shooting in U.S. history with 50 people dead and 400 injured in Las Vegas. Just over a month ago, we saw violence being expressed alongside messages of…
Coming soon…
Hi everyone, It’s been a few months since I’ve posted in here. A lot of stuff has been brewing in my mind, things I really want to write about but am having a hard time articulating. So there are a few articles on the way. I’m going to be writing about social justice and what we should do with that term now that people have taken it to the extreme and made a bad name for it, religion and how its place as behavior modification within individual cultural systems has changed as globalization and our ever changing world allow for…
Imagine covered by Pentatonix
This song embodies the concept of creating a global community by focusing on how our diversity unites us. Belonging can be hard to attain for everyone when we define ourselves by where we fit into the norms and values of one culture or another. Often by creating space for one type of person, we are putting up barriers to someone or something else. Despite our cultural differences, we all have one thing in common, our humanity. “I hope some day you will join us, and the world will live as one.”