What I Speak About
Fostering Resilience in Children
The resilient child is raised by the resilience parent.
Having walked through the early stage of mothering and postpartum depression to the raising of teenagers and all the thousands of children I have taught, I now know the most valuable offering we can give our children is to understand ourselves.
I address the following wonderings:
How can we show up for our children in a way which creates sustainable practices?
How can we, as parents, guide our children to develop agency and a deep understanding of connection?
How can we give them a place of love to return to again and again, while also building our own foundation of compassion?
From infancy through adulthood, the child is a master teacher, how can we learn what is ours to learn and set our children free to be who they are?
Fostering Resilience in Marriage
Through an 18 year marriage, I have come to understand what I seek most in my marriage.
It is not the glossed over version of ideology pressed upon us but instead I seek expansion and a partner willing to love himself enough to shift and grow and in doing so, love me enough to allow me to do the same.
From the loss of jobs and financial destruction, to the near catastrophic loss of our marital connection, to raising children and finding our path again and again and again, what makes a marriage, isn’t bliss.
It’s the desire to return to connection, to understand what is mine to do and what is my husband’s. To let go of unnecessary and unhelpful expectation and come back to our own personal and individual truths and in turn, practice and practice and practice holding the truth of our union with tenderness and honor.
To be loved and to give love in all that arises.
How to Survive Your Child’s Eating Disorder
Having entered recovery at the age of 19, my journey to the here and now is one of at times, gut wrenching sorrow but also, incredible transformation. I can honestly say I would not trade my experience of having an eating disorder as it has brought me tremendous, invaluable opportunities to understand myself, my world, my marriage, my children, and my students.
Raised in the ballet and acting world, I understand the lure of external validation and people pleasing. I also understand how crucial to my whole development the performing arts world has been. In fact, I fully support both of my daughters as they flourish as dancers and I long to expand the conversation around eating disorders, dysmorphia and simply feeling not good enough.
As told through, Ballet's Child, a series of poems I wrote during my recovery, finding redemption in our struggles leads us to sustainable recovery. Let me share this path with you.
Running as Resilience
Running has been one of the most stabilizing factors in my life. My running journey began at the age of 15 and serves as a metaphor for all I struggle with and how I find a way even through the darkest of my suffering.
Through the recovery from an eating disorder, the healing of my relationship with my mom, pregnancy and after the birth of my children, to the mere survival of day to day life and eventually to my most recent work in and through deep and debilitating grief, running gives me a place to fall apart and somehow keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Running teaches me to be present, to find beauty and most of all, to seek and gratitude when all feels impossible.
From running in my teens to running at the colligate level to marathons and ultramarathons, I’d love to share my understandings with you. I can reassure you that no matter where you are in your life journey or your running journey, there is beauty to be found.