Whose story is it anyway?
The other night, my partner and I had dinner with our 30-year-old son. We don’t see him all that often, but when we do there is a lot of conversation. He went from being a kiddo who wasn’t big on talking to a young man who is interested in a lot of subjects and even...
Empowerment Self Defense: a conversation with Lauren Taylor
Lauren Taylor (she/they) is the founder and Executive Director of Defend Yourself, an organization providing classes on self-defense and bystander intervention since 1997. In this interview with Emil, Lauren shares about their new book, Get Empowered: A Practical...
The Impacts of Trauma on Our Brains and Bodies
What effects does trauma have on our brains and bodies? Trauma can impact our relationship to ourselves, to others, and to the world around us. When looking at lists of the possible impacts of trauma, we see that it can affect pretty much any part of our lives and...
Writing to Heal
Storytelling is one way that we can heal from trauma. This might take many forms–telling our story to someone else one-on-one, taking a class or workshop that helps us develop our stories, or doing exploratory writing that’s just for ourselves. Writing can be a...
Building Connected Communities
Imagine a house that’s falling apart. There’s a crack in the foundation, holes in the roof, mold on the walls, faulty electrical wiring, and general gross stuff everywhere. There is no one action that will make the house safe to live in. In fact, some of the problems...
Taking Action: Bystander Intervention Tools to Prevent Violence
I recently attended two bystander intervention trainings by Right To Be, a program out of New York. The first training in this series of three was on being a bystander to interrupt islamophobic violence, which I was unfortunately not able to attend. The second and...