Kol Nidre at the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles is unique from the very beginning. Inmates from different sections of the same security level are not allowed to mix, even for religious services, except when they are. So it’s …
After Appelfeld, ז״ל The [trauma] “was etched inside my body, but not in my memory. “In my writing I wasn’t imagining but drawing out, from the depths of my being, the feelings and impressions I had absorbed because of my …
THE APOLOGY Eve Ensler Of course it’s triggering, but just know this and read however you need to, maybe in small bites, maybe between walks at the ocean, or talks with your therapist, but consider the nature of what it …
TRAUMA-SENSITIVE MINDFULNESS: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing DAVID A. TRELEAVEN Thank you for writing this, David. …
Annie Jackson 1950—2017 Then I notice the Canada Geese are marching directly toward me… Mary Oliver says in “Wild Geese”: Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild …
Zazen is a fluid thing where distinctions never match my actual experience. The cat climbs onto my lap, circles into the curve of my ankle and settles. I sink into whatever this is. This unhappy unknowing. Metta for everyone, to …
The two bald toddlers are cancer patients. There are pizza boxes spread all around the end of the hospital bed, surrounded by IV pumps, on the hematology-oncology ward of Children’s Hospital. The main patient is two years old; they are …
My father was a disturbed man. It is not his death I mourn when his yahrzeit comes every year; it’s something else. This is a complicated grief. Today his yahrzeit brings up less terror and more sadness as I trust …
We all stand and sit in varying postures of disquiet, some on high stools around tables, others on low cushioned chairs, some up at the bar overlooking the country club greens, and one or two even order drinks. Am I …
“One day a long time ago,” I tell my granddaughter, “when my father was only two years old, he wandered away from his house and yard, he went right down the sidewalk and he walked for a long while until …