“Seeing Fires Where There Aren’t Any:” How a history of cliff-side traumas ignited a new response to vertigo
I, for one, was hanging on for dear life. Every 20 yards or so, the hair-pin-turning, cliff-cut road dipped perilously into patches of sunken pavement, evidence of recurring landslides. To one side, a sheer cliff wall; to the other, air and the freedom to plunge into it. Nary a guardrail...
Reclaiming Personal Power: Four Keys to Healing from Trauma
Trauma. It’s a word loaded with meanings both personal and political. Indeed, the very notion of “trauma” itself may be understood as a cultural experience that first emerged from political upheaval. Some theorists trace the origins of our current conceptualization of trauma to the bloody uprisings of the French Revolution in 1789,...
Extremely Dark Places: The role of empathy in healing from suicide
Walking the dog under the St. Johns Bridge one lovely evening a few weeks back, Marlene and I noticed a small patrol boat circling an area of the Willamette River just downstream from the bridge. With night encroaching, a spotlight skimmed across the shimmering dark surface of the water, searching...