In intimate relationships, practicing consent means communicating about touching and boundaries. Consent is essential for a wide range of activities—holding hands, cuddling, oral sex. (As an aside, consent is also important in non-intimate contexts, like disclosing...

FORGE welcomes Anole Halper to our Team May 21, 2019 FORGE is pleased to announce the addition of Anole Halper, MSW, MPH to our staff as Creative Content Coordinator, increasing our capacity to educate and engage the public. Anole (pronouns: they/them/theirs) will...

In the last blog post, we talked about ways to think about and use traumatic anniversaries. Here we offer a toolkit of other useful coping strategies. Create new seasonal associations: Much of what the brain does is create associations between one experience/memory...

Defining Shame A possibly shameful confession: I chose to write a blog post about shame because I wanted to understand it and have an excuse to explore it fully. Like a distant lover, I know it well but don’t feel like I understand it at all. Yet when I searched for...

By Ana Lee Case I knew someone who said she had big feelings. She said they would wash over her like a wave and she’d feel like she was being swept out to sea. I could relate. I’ve had big feelings too, and I know what it’s like to be dragged away from the shore. When...

By Anole Halper Survivors of sexual violence sometimes blame themselves because in the moment of violence, they did something they don’t understand: rather than run away or fight back, they stayed still; they did nothing.  Image description: Image is a blue pie...