Bearing The Stories We Hold: An Interview with Jenni Morello

“We tell stories to live.”  - Joan Didion, The White Album

I recently recalled how my friend Raul, a documentary filmmaker, once described the two of us as “junkies for stories.” While his phrasing was a bit strong for my taste, the sentiment resonated. I believe that stories are at the core of our humanness. Stories are the way we remember things, the way we believe things, and the way we think about things. As a social species we connect and preserve relationships throughout time and space with meaningful stories and experiential narratives.

In my work as a therapist, I believe that the process of understanding our complexity, our contradictions, our identities, and our defenses happens through close examination of the stories that organize our lives - as well as the stories we organize our lives around. And my friend Raul is right (kind of), at the very least I find this work deeply gratifying.  Clearly, however, when I am cathecting to another’s story, particularly a story that is traumatic, painful, or deeply confusing I must be supported. I engage in professional consultation and supervision not only to develop and complexify my clinical impressions but also to assuage myself of the emotional weight of the work. Lately I’ve been curious about other professionals who are called to the work of bearing witness to the details of one’s humanity - particularly the stories that are more challenging to hear - and the ways they care for themselves in the process.

I recently sat down with a close friend, Jenni Morello, another documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, whose film subject matter rivals any therapist’s caseload.  With a background in humanitarian aid and development, including a two year stint in the Peace Corp in Morocco, Jenni has focused her lens on stories of staggering resilience, loss, violence, hope, and survival. Her early career experience as a young female cinematographer traveling the global South for a project about women’s oppression and opportunity ultimately led her to reconcile with secondary trauma, a form of trauma that occurs as a result of exposing oneself or being exposed to someone else’s traumatic experience. I wondered how someone like her, straddling the cusp of real life stories and professional storytelling, tolerates the weight of her subjects’ stories without the supportive scaffolding readily available to someone in a more traditional setting like me.  Please enjoy segments of my conversation with Jenni.

Pilar: A lot of your films deal with trauma similarly to my work (as a therapist). I think some of the subjects of your films have the same sort of emotional content that I'm dealing with. One of the things that I'm curious about is the way you cope without kind of dissolving from sheer over exposure.I know that you have a history of working through that process and I'd love to hear about it.

Jenni: Well I definitely dissolved. I think at some points in time, I definitely dissolved.  I was really lucky because I was working in these areas and was noticing how certain projects were affecting me and I remember having a conversation one time with a journalist about it and the journalist was like well yeah many journalists suffer from secondary trauma because you're exposed to this sort of thing and so of course documentary people would also be exposed to that. I was questioning, I mean there was a curiosity and there was also a questioning, which I think is really important when you're advocating for yourself. I could never sort of let it go even in the moments of dissolving and being like ‘Why do I feel this way? or Why is my behavior towards my friends and family this way?  Why am I acting out in these ways?” I don't think that I was acting out but I was obviously processing like extreme trauma and didn't know what that was or nor did I have the tools in place to sort of understand it. I had a roommate at the time who worked for the International Rescue Committee and there is something sort of interesting about talking to someone whose actual job is to be a clinical provider with people who are living in refugee camps.  Her comment was she never had direct interactions with the people in the camps, she was always three people removed because you have field officers and you also have other people, program managers, and that was the thing that was really interesting to me that I was the person who was actually experiencing when someone was reliving their trauma or in some cases as it was happening to them for the first time they're processing something and you're also present for that you don't quite realize what that is.

Pilar: Can you speak a little bit about the letter that you wrote, when did you write it like tell me the story.

Jenni: So there had been like murmurings amongst my colleagues and in the documentary space for many many years just sort of lightly touching around like mental health stuff and this director who I really admire, Kiron Johnson, directed this documentary called Camera Person, which is this incredible film where she took footage from three films that she had shot and sort of stitched them together. For me watching that movie was like “oh my god I've already had all of these experiences like in this young phase of my career.” She's somewhere in Africa and I can't remember the country but a woman dies in childbirth; there is a story about these women who were sexually assaulted during the war in Bosnia and Croatia; and there's a story of these two towns in Texas that we're dealing with like a person who's wrongly convicted. Things that are like quite heavy topics, but she just weaves these three stories together and it's so so powerful and to me it was always about  her processing her own experience. There's so many things about being behind the camera and how you experience it and recently I was talking about it to a friend who does not work in film who had seen the movie and she didn't think it was about trauma at all which is so interesting. That movie sort of triggered something in me of “Why don't we talk about [trauma]?”

I had started writing my feelings down. I was like I don't know if I'll ever publish something but I'm going to write this thing. There was a sound recordist who I had known since I was like a young person in the industry and she's now retired but I had a really interesting conversation with her one day about this thing that I wanted to write. I kept asking questions like “I don't understand why we don't talk about this why is there resources for journalists but there's not resources for documentary filmmakers” and maybe around that same time someone had written an article about trauma that directors experience while working on documentaries. While that was great I was frustrated because there are other people who work on films, like on these people's films, who have also had the same experience and it might be a very different experience but their voices are just as important. The sound recordist who I had been talking to, she was just telling me how she's never forgotten the pauses like in the same way that for me as a person behind the camera like I'm studying a person right so there are things that you I nonverbal cues you can pick up on in those moments that trigger you in some ways and for her listening to a person who let's say they were assaulted and [the recordist] is listening to the voice because she's just listening to the audio and the way a person sort of pauses while they're talking. She said, “ I think about that all the time, like in my bones.” And I'm like “oh I think I replay the images in my head all the time of the places that I've been and the scenes that I've seen.” It's crazy how we don't talk about this so that was sort of the reason why I wrote this essay and it was mostly just saying like this is my experience.

At that time I had done a lot of therapy and I felt f comfortable advocating for other people and I was like this here are some examples of things that I've worked on that were really hard and I've sort of gotten through it and now I can publicly talk about it but it also has triggered all of these other things that I didn't know about right but we know are directly attached to sort of this having secondary trauma. So it got published like in a magazine and sort of sparked a huge conversation that I think was really needed.

Pilar: You know for therapists we engage in group consultation, so at the bare minimum there's a weekly gathering of consultation where you're able to process and talk about your client load and that's really helpful not only for our clinical growth but also we talk a lot about like holding,what we're holding, and that I think that applies to your profession as well. We hold a lot and then we somehow work with our clients, in our case, to make meaning and understand and heal and it sounds like in your industry you're just passing the content on and on and there's not  a way to kind of just acknowledge what is required to go into making it. I wonder what resources you feel were important to advocate for?

Jenni: I wrote that piece in 2021 so it's been three years and I think since then there's been interesting things. I've been offered therapy on a couple projects which is great but sometimes it also just feels like someone's checking a box or like we know this is a problem so like here's three sessions which… for me as a person who operates a camera it's very much like the years later right, because you're working in the moment it doesn't always hit me until later, when I have really have time to sort of process it.

You know it takes a long time to sort of make big changes in this way. There is an organization that was formed by a woman who used to be a documentary producer turned therapist in the UK. She created this group called Film in Mind which is therapists who are working directly with documentary filmmakers; and from that they started a subgroup called Documentality and they're still sort of in their early phases where they've just been doing research and publishing how bad it is.

I’m a founding member of the Documentary Cinematographers Alliance. We had the woman who runs Film in Mind came on and we had a group therapy session, not like an actual therapy session, but sort of like a safe space for people to sort of talk about things. I've also been pushing too for people to learn sort of like somatic therapy things because there are things you can do in the moment that don't store in your body necessarily in the same way if you sort of know in advance what you're going to get into.

Pilar: I want to thank you for your time Jenni and you know as I'm listening to you there's just so many similarities and like part of what you know I'm sure you're familiar with the stereotypical stoic Blank Slate therapist or you know the that kind of like traditional you know old school analytic and how maybe you don't know but like it as we move into a more relational way of therapy our humanity is as important as anyone else is in that space and that there's a relationship happening and I feel like there's something really similar to the work that you do and what is required of you to create trust and create an environment where people feel comfortable opening up but that we are also tasked with being in a role right. We are the camera person, we are the therapist we're not there as the subject or the client and and yet our humanity and who we are is the ingredient that makes our subjects and clients more sort of successful in the interaction and I just love that similarity. My last question is what do you feel are the important ingredients in creating a connection with your subjects in order to feel kind of like a good steward so to speak of their story.

Jenni: I mean well we say this often but like the off camera time is just as important as the on camera time so I feel like most of the projects I would say all of the projects I work on like people are pretty cognizant of like the giving and taking of of people in that space and and so you know that means like hanging out with them or having dinner with people because they're also still humans right they just like happen to be in a movie um and I think reminding people too that like they don't always have to be on camera like if they're they have the agency to say no I think is really important. I don't know I've kept in touch with everyone because like they do sort of become you've become a part of someone's life like I mean I think about this constantly I'm like oh I have filmed so many people's births like what a weird intimate thing to experience right so of course they sent me a Christmas card that like first of like that's so funny I was like oh no no right I was I literally witnessed their the birth of their child like of course like I'm getting a Christmas card that's such a funny thing

Pilar: You're filming their life but you are in their life.

Jenni: I think that happens all the time because you're having these sort of shared experiences. Depending on the experience you're also experiencing that with them so I think that I don't know you're just practicing General kindness and generosity I feel like it's just right.

Pilar: Well thank you so much for talking to me and I hope that we can link to your article in this post so everyone can see um what you wrote and also read more about you and all the great work that you're doing!

“I’m not single, I’m in a relationship with my money.” An Interview with Miata Edoga

Because a distorted relationship with money can have a devastating impact on mental health, we wanted to take a closer look at both the reality based elements and some of the inherent psychological aspects of it. We sat down to speak to Miata Edoga, the CEO and Founder of Abundance Bound, an 18 year old financial education company that focuses on removing mystery around money and committed to strengthening a healthier relationship with money. 

Miata is in a unique position to offer an overlapping perspective around the often tricky balance between the examination of our money mindset, along with the practical skills that can help to form a strong financial foundation. As therapists we are always holding in mind the complexity of personal meaning (of money in this instance), generally formed from one’s earliest experiences. There is, therefore, an inherent uniqueness in what money represents and the power it holds for each individual.

We glimpsed into Miata’s real world process and how she navigated her self beliefs and distorted relationship to earning and money, revealing its impact on growth and change, allowing us to inflect on financial anxiety which is so commonplace and pervasive, and explored the intersection of emotion and some of the more destructive elements of money such as measurement of our self value and esteem with it.

Miata, thank you for being with us. Can you begin by telling us more about your company, the community you serve and what issues you address? 

So, we just celebrated our 18th birthday! Abundance bound is a financial education company specifically for non-traditional earners.  Actors, artists, creative professionals, or people who do not earn a paycheck every two weeks or with any stability, and that is a rapidly growing part of our world. It's projected that 51% of workers will be what we call non-traditional earners in the coming years.

For people, money is a really challenging topic and it's very emotional. It can be very painful. It can create an enormous amount of stress. We know that it disrupts relationships, all of these things. But when you add the complication of not earning with stability, I think it's easy for it to become this major source of trauma. So we very much focus both on the mindset that is required to be a non-traditional earner, but also the very practical management skills.

How does one’s environment impact their relationship to money and shape beliefs or create emotional barriers or distorted emotional attachments? 

One of the many problems is that not only are we not as a society taught about money, but for non-traditional earners, most of what is out there, the books, the classes, the gurus, they're all speaking to what you should be doing with your 401k, all of those things that for the non-traditional earner, really often, don't exist.  

And so there can also be a tendency to just shut down to just say, “Oh, that that stuff isn't for me” and “I can't do it. I don't have the ability to do it. My life doesn't allow me to do it.”

Which then leads to a cycle of shame, and hiding. So we also focus on very practically how you manage unpredictable income. 

How does one straddle the gap or bridge the gap of all these sides? Often that can be very cyclical. What are some very practical skills and behaviors that can actually help with the stress and anxiety?

I think that really the place that we start is grounding people in the fact that they do have a relationship with money. I actually think most of us haven't thought of it that way. We don't think of it like a relationship. We think of it like, “the thing I have to deal with, that is getting in my way, that is causing me problems.” But we don't think of it as a relationship. And so that's really where we start. There are a handful of relationships in your life that you actually do not have a choice whether or not to have. And your relationship with money is one of them. Like genuinely, unless you are truly relinquishing all of your earthly goods and going to live on a mountaintop somewhere, you've had a relationship with money since the day you were born, you weren't aware of it, that's where the relationship began, and you will have it until the day that you die.  

So once we accept that as a premise, like any relationship, we really ask our clients to now start thinking of it just like a relationship with a person in their lives. So to actually make it concrete, we know that all the relationships we have are healthy and thriving, or toxic or frightening or somewhere on that spectrum in between. We will always ask people to consider if you have a relationship with a human being and you are committed to having that relationship be a healthy one, a good one, and for whatever reason, you cannot end that relationship, then what is required of me to make the relationship healthy?  

And people typically have no problem saying, “Relationships need my time and it needs me to be honest and contain love.” And also addressing poor communication, and having obsessive thoughts about it,  is detrimental. But so is ignoring the relationship.  In a positive relationship, having a sense of humor is a good balance. So we start by having people list what are the things that they are committed to bringing to healthy relationships. Because at that point we can then say, okay, so now practically, how are you bringing those things to your relationship with money? 

And most people will then have a very kind of visceral reaction like “Oh gosh. I'm not honest with the relationship. I'm not consistent. I definitely am not bringing understanding to it. I ignore it.” Either that, or: “I obsess about it, I'm kind of terrified of it.” 

We have to work on shifting those things. I think we then have the ability to dive deeper into “what is your personal relationship?” Now people have more of a connection and are able to say, “yeah, my relationship definitely has fear”, or “my relationship has a whole lot of fantasy thinking attached to it.” Or “my relationship really lacks understanding, I have a lot of anger around this relationship.” So now we can really look at what those things are, and that is then what allows an opening to dive deeper into where some of those stories may have come from.  

What is the story arch of your personal relationship to money?

I'm the first generation in the United States. My father was from Nigeria, my mother from Panama, and both of my parents really came from pretty significant poverty. My father especially, like we're talking no running water, not always having shelter, that kind of thing. And so they came to the United States and they really fought hard and studied and worked 12 jobs. My dad ended up going to medical school and my mother to law school, and my mom became a lawyer, and my dad became a surgeon. And all of that is an incredible story. And they then brought family members and educated them. But my parents raised me that if you were not suffering, you could not expect financial success. Financial success required, like literally “your fingers should be bleeding”.  

If you want to have stability and security, we can understand completely and totally where that story came from and how it served them. But it took me a really long time to understand that I believed suffering was virtuous. I genuinely believed it was virtuous. And anyone who

tried to tell me, maybe you don't have to be working so hard, struggling so much, I was privately really judging that person as like, well, they're not gonna get anywhere in their lives. That meant that I had eleven jobs at one point. I was never sleeping, I cried all the time because I couldn't pay my bills even though I had eleven jobs. But I felt like that was what was required of me, and a significant amount of shame that clearly I was not working hard enough, so bring on job number twelve. So, but it started with me seeing, “Oh, I have a relationship here and what are the realities of that relationship right now?”  

There appears to be an emotional thread of both the value and internal virtue system that gets embedded in the meaning making. And thus a sense of derived scarcity, which is on the other end of a seesaw. Feeling the scarcity, being in the chase, that cyclically reinforces the feeling.  Having eleven jobs is the chase to fill the misdirected void “I'm never gonna have enough”.  We’re noticing a correlation between suffering and stability,  it reminds us of relationships that people have with their trauma and their grief. That there has to be this experience of acceptance in order to move forward or through. It sounds like what you're really doing requires being realistic about your own reality and history with money and the impact of this energy, the money energy that's not avoidable. If you really want to change your relationship to money, you have to be willing to bring consciousness to your attitudes towards it. 

I had a lot of years of reckoning with my own financial stories and what the results of those were. And for a long time I just wanted someone to tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do and how to fix it. Like, what's the debt plan, what's the tip that's gonna get me out of this mess that I'm in? It really took me a long time to accept that yes, of course there are practical behaviors, but I'm not going to consistently implement those practical behaviors when I don't have awareness of what all the reasons are that I am behaving the way that I am around money.  

So what getting conscious means is that it allows me to say, “What's the type of relationship I want to have ?” Like any relationship between two people, there is no perfect marriage. There is an empowering part of saying, what do I want from my relationship with money? How would I actually like it to feel? Is peacefulness an important part for me? Cause there's someone who might say, I want a little excitement, I want some spice in my financial life. Or I might be like, “oh, no, no spice at all, please!” We start to look at what are the behaviors that will actually support that kind of relationship that you'd like to have.  

Do you think money is a benign thing that we then come to with all of this history and emotion, trauma, desire? How does that relate to the way that money can define people too, or how the lack of money defines people? How do you speak to the societal component of how we collectively value money as a culture?

I think it's very important that in any conversation about money, we have to acknowledge the sort of significant failures of the system.  I am very comfortable going on record as saying that capitalism has essentially been a failed system. And we are seeing the results of that. However, I see my job as helping people exist as powerfully as they can within a system that is absolutely going to be the system for our lifetime. And that doesn't mean we aren't working to shift and improve it. With that said, I do believe that our job as human beings and as people who have committed to helping in this area is to separate our self-worth from some financial result. So once we achieve safety and the ability to provide for our lives, which again is a whole conversation, but once we achieve that, the element that our society has created around keeping up with the Joneses and feeling that I am only defined by this accounting, “I am down here if my bank account is down here and I am up here, if my bank account is up here”, our part of what I believe very strongly is the core of the work is recognizing that the quality of my relationship with money is actually completely separate from the amount of money that I have.  

So regardless of the size of one’s coffer, viewing it as a relationship that needs maintenance rather than a direct equivalent of one’s self worth is essential.

There are plenty of people with plenty of money who have really negative toxic relationships with money. And we also know that there are people with very little, who actually have healthy relationships with money. So a big part of the job is saying, how do I look at the qualities of my relationship separate from my results? 

A concrete example would be the quality of honesty. So, being willing to be honest about exactly what I have, what my exact debt is, “how I am spending, and what's the average cost of my groceries, etc.?” is part of my willingness to get clear, which is the starting foundation. What you'll then see is that true of all of the qualities of a healthy relationship, is giving it the allowance of time and commitment. Whatever little bit of time we may have, are we willing to bring it to the relationship? So this is how I think the things become concrete, and we're able to move these very real things about how we are thinking and feeling and experiencing money. We're able to bring those into the practical behaviors as well.  

Poet and Prose Writer Audre Lorde writes:

“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect.”

You shared this beautiful story about how your family overcame their financial station and recreated their financial reality. In that process, you had to unlearn some pretty unhelpful messages around money, earning and value. And we’re curious about that awareness and what made you shift? What made you say “this can't be right and there must be a better way?”. Do you think that most of us need to kind of re-evaluate what our first relationship with money was?  

I think with all of our relationships, it's always helpful to spend some time thinking about them and what are the ways that we might want to make some shifts or improvements or growth. So I was able to say, alright, I'm working all the time, I'm barely getting any sleep, but I still am struggling to pay my bills and I have amassed thousands and thousands of dollars worth of debt. So I had to get really clear about the realities, and then ask myself what did I believe about money? 

I think when you're doing this kind of exercise, putting brainstuff down on the paper is important.  I remember writing things like, “making money is hard”, “good people don't care about being rich”. “As an artist, I will always have to be willing to struggle.”  “Debt is bad.”  These are my  “Money Scripts.” So I wrote these things down and then asked myself “which of these beliefs genuinely are serving you?” And I remember the one that I struggled with the most was “Making money is hard”.  Why did I believe that making money was hard and really presenting oneself the proof.  

It was my parents who taught me this. Who could possibly say their lives weren’t hard? Unpacking that to the place where I was able to say, “But wait, how is that belief serving me now with my life today?” And there's a process, it's not magic. Because I still felt like, well, I'm not gonna become one of those people parading around saying, “you know, money is easy, money goes to me, like water.”  I was like, “that's all nonsense.” It was understanding that there actually was a long road in between those two thoughts. From “You gotta have blood coming from your fingers” to then move to a belief “that “money flows like water” with no effort. There was actually a journey there.

I feel like that was the beginning of my process.Once you are able to bring up a crack into one belief system, it's like it almost sets off dominoes, then being like, “well wait, maybe, maybe this isn't true either”. Am I willing to dive into that, and “where did that come from?”.  

How can people find you and use your services and what are any last words you have to share?

Our financial empowerment program is without question, the work that I am the proudest of because I believe the community is really important. And I think we have to remove the shame from this conversation with finance and money. There shouldn't be a hint of it there. And I think that the more we're able to work with and dive into these topics and develop our systems with communities of people, the better we do.

We're at abundance bound.com. https://abundancebound.com/

We're on all the social media channels such as Instagram Abundance Bound https://www.instagram.com/abundancebound/?hl=en

Thank you Miata, we are so honored for your time and highlighting the intricate layers of creating a values and needs based relationship with finances. 

Pilar Haile-Damato, LCSW and Betsy Chin, AMFT

"THE WHOLE WORLD IS ONE NEIGHBORHOOD": An Interview with Miry Whitehill, Founder of Miry's List

Sarah: Tell us about Miry’s List and why you started the organization.

Miry: So, Miry’s List is a nonprofit organization that I founded in 2016. We work with families who are resettling as refugees in the United States. We are based here in Eagle Rock. However, we work with families all over the country. Currently, Miry’s List families live in 24 states nationwide. The situation when a family is coming through the federal government’s refugee admission’s program is often with a lot of confusion, exhaustion, obviously grief, and oftentimes trauma. At Miry’s List we support families for 12 months from their time of arrival, and we are here in addition to what is provided by the government. We want to make sure that families have a community support system--that is really the point of Miry’s List. The reality is that most of the families who are in our program are coming from countries including Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran. More recently we are enrolling families from Ukraine and Moldova. Families are coming from communities where they had a vast network of families and friends, and so just imagining one day without friends is hard to imagine. I’m just getting over COVID right now, and just in my home being without my own friends for five days was heartbreaking. I didn’t feel like I could even recognize myself, and that is a lot of what our families report feeling. It is so lonely.

The programs that are offered by Miry’s List are very focused on specific challenges the refugees face, so for example, a rapid response program that is going to impact a family’s first 30 days. That is to address the tremendous challenge of families starting out in homes without the essential supplies they need to be safe, comfortable, and functional. So rapid response is all about making sure that everyone in the family has a place to sleep at night—a comfortable bed. And our approach through this program, because the point of the program is, yes, we want to get every single family a bed. But also, we want to leave them feeling a sense of autonomy and sense of there are a lot of people that really care that I’m comfortable, so that is kind of the dual approach that we take with all of our programs. And what we feel is a success is that at the end of the 12 months, a family will feel so wrapped in love and nurturing, that they will have nothing else to do but pour that out into somebody else that needs help. Because we all have something to give, and that is the cycle of giving.

Sarah: So, they can then become a volunteer or perhaps work for Miry’s List?

Miry: Yeah, actually most of our staff are people who have lived experience with this and have graduated from our program, and many of our volunteers as well. It is a human instinct: as soon as we have our needs met, our human instinct is to wonder are my neighbors OK? The people that I see at my kid’s school drop off, do they have what the need? And so that is a formal part of our program as well. It is for everyone! There is no income threshold that is the one who gives service. It is literally all of us have something to give. And that approach has totally changed my life.

Sarah: How has your work with Miry’s List enhanced your understanding of what it means to be a neighbor in your community? Has it changed your understanding of that?

Miry: Well, I know so many more people than I did now than I did before Miry’s List began! It really just started with a couple of friends, and it started growing pretty quickly from there once we started getting the word out that we were collecting supplies for one family that had just arrived from Syria. People were coming from all over Eagle Rock, from all over Silver Lake, from Echo Park, from all over Northeast LA because what we were learning at the time is so many American people want to help refugees, and they want an easy mechanism to do so. So just making it available brought so many people together around this one family, and at Miry’s List we refer to “our families” as “OUR families” but also we say “new neighbors” and “our neighbors” and “new American families” and all these terms that are accurate in how we describe the people who are benefitting from our programs. I think it’s important that we can acknowledge that we don’t have to live next door to someone to think of them as your neighbor, to think of them as your partner in making your community better, and there’s a saying that I love. It’s an Arabic proverb and it says, “We and the moon are neighbors” and I love that because it’s just such a beautiful and poetic way of putting it, but like all of us billions of human beings are just standing on this spinning ball of fire, and we are just in space and that means we are all neighbors, and I like to think about it like that.

“I think it’s important that we can acknowledge that we don’t have to live next door to someone to think of them as your neighbor, to think of them as your partner in making your community better, and there’s a saying that I love. It’s an Arabic proverb and it says, “We and the moon are neighbors” and I love that because it’s just such a beautiful and poetic way of putting it, but like all of us billions of human beings are just standing on this spinning ball of fire, and we are just in space and that means we are all neighbors, and I like to think about it like that.”

— Miry Whitehill

Sarah: It kind of reminds me of this question of technology. In some ways it [technology] helps us see our neighbors, but in other ways, I think it can draw us apart because we can just be sitting in, you know, our houses, but in other ways it helps us see the world. How do you think technology has made us less or more connected to our neighbors?

Miry: Well, I think that things really shifted drastically during COVID when access to technology became equal to access to an education. When schools shut down and families were coming to the US, there was a short time when the refugee program paused during COVID, but families were coming, basically the whole time, and you know, for a family whose coming without a built in network of friends and a community, it is very difficult. That isolation that all of us felt, really kind of burning inside our soul, that was exacerbated for folks who are in the Miry’s List program, and recognizing that kids could not access their classrooms without a device at home, that quickly became, this isn’t a luxury, this is a necessity because it is their human right to be able to access their classroom.

Here we are, it’s 2023, our schools have reopened, but meanwhile in Afghanistan girls and women are not allowed to go to school after 7 th grade, and their access to education has been taken from them. It is a negotiation of a lot of conflicting feelings, and our families rely on technology because that is your translator in your pocket. It is going to let you call your mom and let her know that you arrived safely. When your partner goes to the grocery store, and you are in a new neighborhood, and you don’t know when they are going to be back, your phone is the only way you can communicate with them. And there are families that have been separated. Imagine being separated from your partner at the airport, and then they get on a plane, and they leave the country, and you don’t know when you are going to see them again.

Sarah: Yeah, that sounds terrifying.

Miry: And for the kids. And then reuniting as a family, some months later—6 months later, a year later—that is going to take time for that wound to heal, and so a cell phone for somebody in that situation is going to be a comfort to know that you are tied to that person. That they are not going to be taken away from you the way that they have been. This is a valid fear. It will probably take more than a generation for some of these wounds to heal, so I would say technology is an absolute necessity, not a luxury. I’m talking about cell phones, laptops, and tablets for younger kids; for our families, these are absolute essentials for keeping in touch, connecting with the outside world, and for education.

Sarah: I see how all of that is just so important. And how in COVID it became even more important. I imagine it was hard and people didn’t necessarily know if and when they could go back to where they came from originally, but during COVID it was even more uncertain about what was going on with their family members.

Miry: Yeah. And there were times where there were COVID surges through refugee camps and very little healthcare. And it is very, very freighting. And even here, we have world class hospitals that were setting up beds in parking lots. I think that that experience really gave people whose lives had never really been directly impacted by war, or really have ever been in a situation where they had to flee persecution or something like this. This is like what ties the experience of all refugees together, all over the world, everyone has a unique experience that is totally their own. The thing that ties them together is they fled violence and persecution and they can’t return home.

And then COVID happened and then suddenly everyone has this firsthand experience to be afraid of what’s on the other side of the door. Because most reasonable people were feeling that, and so that does connect us in a way with what it might feel like to be afraid, just even in your own home. And there’s plenty of people who were like, we are going to go move to the mountains for a couple of years, we are going to go to a house in Hawaii, and we are going to go visit my family in Australia—they have a totally different COVID situation--and that’s migration. That is what families do. They look at the cards they are dealt, they look at the resources they have, and the say all right, this is what we are going to do. This is going to have the safest outcome for our family, and ultimately that is what the experience of a refugee family really is.

“ How can we make sure that our kids are with the tools that they need to become the welcomers to those students? To show them what they can do even if it’s something as simple as looking at them and waving and smiling at them. I think there is a way we can create more opportunities for those bridges, be it in the classroom or at the playground at our local school. We have an afterschool club called “People of the World” and it is a ten week training for welcomers. It is for ages TK-2 nd grade, and each week we focus on a different issue. It comes together to get these kids to a point where they can become the official welcomers of the school. This is something that even a 4-year-old can understand. It addresses such a basic human need: Everyone wants to feel safe, they want to feel loved, and they want to feel important, and I can tell even your little one, he can understand that. Every single human being needs these things.”

— Miry Whitehill

Sarah: Yeah, that is very true. It changed the way many people live, or where they decided they could live, and they had the privilege to do that, many of us here. So, what would you say, what kind of relationships have developed between the volunteers and the people in the program. And you were saying a lot of time, the people in the program become the volunteers, so I imagine there have been friendships and many different kinds of relationships that have developed, but what sticks out to you the most?

Miry: Well, we launched a program called SANAH (Supporting American Newcomers At Home). It’s a virtual home learning program. We originally launched it because our families were saying we need English classes that we can do from home. So, we thought, OK, let’s just bring on some tutors and give them an ESL-based social-emotional curriculum. Let’s connect these helpful volunteers with families and everything will be great, and people can make some new friends. And we ran that program for a few consecutive cohorts of students, volunteers, and tutors for 12 weeks each. And what we found when we surveyed the participants on both sides is that while the whole thing was in the context of having a conversation in English, people were not sticking to the curriculum like grammar and letters and how to spell things.

They were talking about why are the chickens so big at the grocery store in November? Tell meabout Ramadan? I hear about it, but I don’t really know what it is all about. Tell me about what you are wearing? I’ve never seen a dress like that. And this cultural exchange was happening because we were connecting people who had previously been intentionally isolated from each other by this governmental program idea that refugees shouldn’t be dependent on society, so let’s make sure they have a case worker for 90 days, but we don’t want to mix them up too much to make them dependent. But what we find time and time again: Each time we make these connections between our helpers, our volunteers, and our families are that we are interdependent, all of us. We need each other. We need each other to learn, to learn about each other, but also to learn about ourselves. And I know that everyone who is reading this or watching this can probably relate to someone asking you a question, and you answer them, and you realize, I just learned something about myself! And that happens all the time.

The other thing I notice is that resettlement is a time of transition. It is a transformative time in someone’s life. What are the hardest times in someone’s life? It’s having a baby, getting married, and moving. Those are three of the five most stressful times in someone’s life. So, if we can think of this big global crisis of refugee resettlement as a transformative time for a family, and then we can intervene at that time with love and care and friendship and support, we are creating moments that will be remembered for generations. Because every single person will remember the people that showed up for them in those transformative days, and they will tell their children about them if their children don’t remember, and they will tell their children’s children about them, and I think that’s really important for our volunteers to understand. Even volunteers who aren’t sticking with it for 12 weeks to do a program. Even somebody who writes one welcome card.

Sarah: Oh, I love that.

Miry: I’m going to read it to you: Hello new friend. Welcome to your new home. I know this has been a long journey for your family and we are so lucky to be your new neighbors. We are happy to welcome you into our community, and we welcome you with open arms and full hearts.

With Gratitude, Ana

And she made this beautiful cover art. And you know, this little one.

Sarah: Oh, I love that. That’s so great.

Miry: This one says: Dear Friend, Welcome to the United States. It takes a lot of courage to make a big move like that, and I admire you for taking this risk. We welcome you with open arms. I hope to meet you one day soon.

Sarah: That is so sweet. It makes me want to tear up, thinking about coming to this unknown place, and then to read something like that.

Miry: So, we send out hundreds of these. I have a box, this high, next to me, and we get photos from our families back. These are on the wall in an apartment, stuck to the refrigerator, on the windows because it is the message that counteracts all of those fears of you don’t belong here, you are isolated, your problems are yours alone, and nobody is here to care for you. These are valid fears that folks who have been on this journey can hold in their hearts, and then they receive these heartfelt letters, and it helps to counteract, to soften some of that, with a little bit of wonder: maybe I do have more friends than I realize here, and maybe the American people are welcoming towards refugees. Maybe the thing that I saw on the media, about the way Americans feel about refugees, isn’t 100 percent accurate to the way my neighbors feel about me. And that is how we can create bridges. Even without people meeting each other face to face. So, I think that is pretty powerful.

Sarah: That is really powerful. That reminds me: Does there tend to be a language barrier a lot of the time or how does that work?

Miry: Typically, for a lot of our families, one or more of our family members will come already speaking some English because there are a lot of people that were English interpreters in Afghanistan that worked with the US military there. However, in many cases, the entire family is learning English. And that means that school-aged students are going in every day surrounded by their contemporaries, and they are going to be in an ESL program at their school. The same isn’t always true for their parents or older siblings. You know college-age siblings aren’t necessarily as integrated to daily English learning as the younger students and that language barrier creates awkwardness.

Socially it is difficult to communicate with somebody who you don’t share a first language with. But also, there are all these fears in learning a first language. Because basically to learn a new language, you have to surrender to just being wrong. Can you just agree that you will be wrong a lot of the time? The fastest way to learn a language is you have to practice. And you have to practice being not perfect at something. For some personality types, no problem. For other personality types, that is really hard. There are people who are very perfectionistic, who don’t feel comfortable doing something unless they can do it 110 percent, and I know those people, that’s not me. That’s really what it takes to learn a new language. And can you be vulnerable in a group of strangers to say something and potentially say it totally wrong? What if I have an accent? What does my accent say about me? What can we do as people who are native English speakers for people who are talking with us, who are using an accent? I think that we can play a big part in making it more comfortable for them and remembering if someone is speaking with an accent that means that they speak more than one language, and that is admirable and thatis impressive.

Sarah: My son is in a dual immersion program, and I do not speak another language, and for me the fear of talking to him sometimes feels overwhelming, so I can’t even imagine. He’s just my son! He’s always correcting my accent. What advice would you give people who would like to reach out to their neighbors but don’t know how to start?

Miry: No matter where you live, there are local community organizations working with refugees near you, even if it is at the library, there are programs for new Americans. I would say if someone is really wanting to get involved locally, the best place to start is Google. Miry’s List is based in Los Angeles, so for a lot of people in LA, they are working with us as a primary mechanism to become welcomers towards newcomers. Not necessarily people who are resettling in Los Angeles because our families are all over the country. We are now in 24 states. And hundreds of cites, by the way.

Sarah: That’s been since I talked to you last in 2019. It seems like it wasn’t that long ago.

Miry: It wasn’t that long ago, and actually that was really the turning point when we started receiving a lot of requests for services out of state, and now 30 percent of our program recipients live in the DC metro area, and there is a lot that we can do virtually to make sure that families feel connected. Just this morning I was talking to someone, she’s a graduate of our program, and she is somebody who is a cardiothoracic surgeon from Afghanistan. She’s taken herself through medical school for a second time to go back to where her heart is. Her mom is also a cardiothoracic surgeon. She has a two-year-old and has her hands full. She works at a luxury car dealership, selling cars to make ends meet, and her life is hard. The amount of resilience, persistence, hard work, and talent, I mean, I cannot imagine being able to sell a car to someone, and in another language, like she is also one of their top sales people. Literally anything that you do you are going to be really good at it, obviously, that’s the kind of person she is. But just being a friend is something that is so important to people. I have been in a hundred different points of my life where I just really needed a community support system—that’s what I try to draw from when I get the chance to show up for someone who is in a hard time in their life, just listening, and being a listening ear is a very powerful thing.

The other thing I want to mention, because we talked about kids and classrooms: new arrival students are enrolling in our schools, in every single school district. In my kid’s school there are three Ukrainian families who just got here this year. So, what can we do as parents and caretakers of our kids? How can we make sure that our kids are with the tools that they need to become the welcomers to those students? To show them what they can do even if it’s something as simple as looking at them and waving and smiling at them. I think there is a way we can create more opportunities for those bridges, be it in the classroom or at the playground at our local school. We have an afterschool club called “People of the World” and it is a ten week training for welcomers. It is for ages TK-2 nd grade, and each week we focus on a different issue. It comes together to get these kids to a point where they can become the official welcomers of the school. This is something that even a 4-year-old can understand. It addresses such a basic human need: Everyone wants to feel safe, they want to feel loved, and they want to feel important, and I can tell even your little one, he can understand that. Every single human being needs these things.

Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this. Is there anything else you want to add or comes to mind?

Miry: Two things - These will be linked below. The first thing is a newer program of Miry’s List called our Welcomer’s Circle. For somebody who really wants to get involved, this is our monthly giving program and at whatever level. Ten dollars a month is a very helpful thing because with monthly donations, we are able to plan for the future. That is one of the most helpful ways that someone can get involved.

The other thing that I want to say is me and Jennifer wrote a book together called, Our World Is a Family: Our Community Can Change the World. This is very helpful for parents who want to talk to their kids about these issues. So, this is why we wrote this book so parents, teachers, caregivers, and grandparents would have a way to have the difficult conversations about why people move around the world as refugees, and what we can do to become the welcomers at our space. That’s another tool.

Sarah: Awesome. Well, thanks again!

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Sarah Butcher, LMFT is constantly reminded that we all seek to make meaning out of the human experience, from seeking to understand our fears, insecurities, and wounds, to making sense of our moments of joy, anticipation, and contentment. As a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, Sarah believes that healing happens in the context of genuine relationships.

Links: Welcomer’s List: https://www.pledge.to/mirys-list-welcomers-circle Our World Is a Family: Our Community Can Change the World: https://miryslist.org/ourworldisafamily

Oh (M)other: Welcoming the Other in Mother with Dr. Marguerite Maguire MD

Below is a conversation between Erika Mitchell, LMFT and Dr. Marguerite Maguire, MD , our former and beloved in-house psychiatrist at Michelle Harwell Therapy. Dr. Maguire has a specialty and personal interest in treating issues related to maternal mental health.

E: I've heard the term 'maternal mental health' refer to the moment a person conceives through the first year of that child's life, so considering that time-frame, I'm curious what are some cognitive/hormonal shifts or changes in the brain that could impact mental health, and that you might assess for when seeing a new patient coming in for concerns related to being the birthing person?

M: There is a drastic identity shift when you become pregnant and even greater when you become a mother. You may still the same inside but suddenly society sees you completely differently, you can feel the sudden shift in expectations. I think that shift, trying to match up how you feel with outsiders' vision of you, is a dramatic one that is a bit intangible and so often goes unrecognized. Society sort of puts you away as a viable, sexual, vital being and ushers you into a lane of service, selflessness, endless giving. Birth often changes your body permanently. 1 in 3 people who have been pregnant have some degree of incontinence and 1/2 have some degree of pelvic organ prolapse. It's really wild that we don't hear more about this. Women just quietly soldier on. I think I've gone a little off topic here, let me reign myself back in. As you progress through pregnancy, your estrogen is climbing and climbing. Those last weeks of pregnancy I find are usually quite anxiety inducing and depressing for patients. They are about to take a leap off a cliff from which there is no return, even if they've done all they can to prepare, they have no idea what to expect, and they're likely not sleeping well due to size and comfort. Then you give birth and you lose 99% of your body's estrogen in the 24 hours after birth. The real sleeplessness sets in, and on day 3 or so, your milk comes in so the hormonal changes leave you whiplashed with how quickly they change. I find the first 4 weeks to be the toughest on most birthing people's mental health.

E: How does the intersection of birthing-person mental health disorders with other identities such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender impact the experience of mental health disorders? 

M: Oh man, wish I had more expertise on this subject but I think it's important that it be widely known that black women are three to four times more likely to die in pregnancy and five times more likely to die from pregnancy-related cardiomyopathy and blood pressure disorders than white women. Also the majority of black women live in the 22 States that have banned abortion. Black women also have higher shares of preterm births, low birthweight births, or births for which they received late or no prenatal care compared to white women and these figures have not changed with improvements with overall healthcare quality and access. Also limited abortion access in the south disproportionately affects black women so we can expect all the above facts to worsen as abortion access becomes more and more restricted.

“Society sort of puts you away as a viable, sexual, vital being and ushers you into a lane of service, selflessness, endless giving.”

— -Dr. Maguire

E: In what ways do societal expectations and norms surrounding motherhood contribute to birthing person mental health disorders, and how can we work to challenge and change these expectations?

M: Society's expectations of pregnant people are extremely strict. When you're visibly pregnant people automatically know something intimate about you that you didn't maybe mean to tell them or consent to them knowing. People often touch your belly without asking and offer unsolicited advice. There are signs at bars and coffee shops warning pregnant people about birth defects which I find a bit condescending. It's strange that one day, when a fetus implants, all of a sudden Starbucks is educating me on how I ought to be living my life. We expect people to make mistakes and choices that are less than ideal for their health, like smoking for example, but the second that person becomes pregnant, society gasps if you haven't figured out a way to give up all your vices and become a perfect person overnight.

E: What are some common myths or misunderstandings related to mental health disorders of the birthing person?

M: The most important myth is that PREGNANCY IS A HAPPY TIME. There's immense pressure to be overjoyed at being pregnant. 1/2 of pregnancies in the US are unplanned so we ought to be careful when we congratulate people upon learning they are pregnant. It might not be happy news and it definitely might be ambivalent news. Especially if a person had a hard time getting pregnant, went through cycles of infertility treatments, they are under enormous pressure to be grateful every second of pregnancy and parenthood. But because of hormones, and role changes, and body changes and a whole host of intricate psychological underpinnings, pregnancy is not happy for everyone all the time. Any mental health condition you've experienced prior to pregnancy, is more likely to return during pregnancy. So if you've been depressed before, there is a good chance you'll have depression in pregnancy or in the postpartum period. Wouldn't it be nice if that were an okay thing to speak about.

E: Much of the literature related to 'maternal' mental health seems to emphasize social support as a huge protective factor against mental health disorders. Any advice for introverts or those who are choosing to have a child on their own?

M: Birthing a child on their own-- enlist the help of friends and family! It need not be a romantic partner. Introverts-- warn anyone you'll be spending time with ahead of time how you like to be cared for. Perhaps rather than sitting around and socializing with you, or watching you intently as you breastfeed, a loved one could show their support by popping into your house, doing your dishes, putting away your laundry, then leaving without a word.

E: What's up with breastfeeding (or chest feeding as is the new, more proper terminology)?

M: There has been a big push toward "breast is best" and the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months and ongoing breastfeeding for 2+ years. This is A LOT, especially for a person who has any predisposition to mental health issues. Some people find breastfeeding to be a bonding experience, a special time between them and their baby, and they feel good giving the baby all those antibodies especially during a pandemic but I want to give a blanket ITS OKAY TO STOP to anyone who has a hard time with breastfeeding. Most of my friends and patients continue to do it out of obligation and guilt, feeling selfish if they don't want to do it. If you exclusively breastfeed you have to do ALL the night time feedings whereas formula can be given by any one in the household. It wreaks havoc on your sleep. The data for how much more beneficial breastmilk is compared to formula is not strong. Much more important to have a happy, well rested, emotionally attuned parent. "FED IS BEST." I say. I think the guilt of breastfeeding is just another way in which mom guilt lurks around every corner. You know it's Mom Guilt when either way you do things, you'll feel bad. In those cases you have to just kick that thought to the curb. If you go back to work you're abandoning your baby but if you're JUST a stay at home mom you're not setting an example for your kid that women can have multifaceted identities and successful careers etc etc, there's no winning, its mom guilt, chop it up and toss it to the wind!

E: Thank you so much Dr. Maguire for all of your words of wisdom, I always appreciate your down to earth approach to mental health.  As an expecting parent I feel a sense of relief after talking with you about some of these things, and I hope others feel the same :)

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Erika Mitchell, MA, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.. Erika specializes in helping her clients bring mindful, attuned awareness to their sensations and emotions.

Opening Ourselves to Connectivity: An Interview with Kate Maher, LMFT

For our ‘Humans of MHT” series this month, we are featuring an interview between Kate Maher, LMFT, and Jennifer Jackson, MSW. In this interview, Jennifer speaks with Kate about her perspective of humanness and how that plays out in her work as a clinician. Kate shares about the necessity of embracing connectivity amid struggles and situations that lead to grief, sadness, and confusion.

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Below you will find the interview transcript.

Jennifer Jackson: Hi, Kate.

 Kate Maher: Hi, Jennifer.

 JJ: Good to see you.

 KM: You too. I'm looking forward to this.

 JJ: So today we get to talk about some things about humanness and what that means to us. But first…We started about the same time, about a year ago.

 KM: Yeah, we did. We’re coming up on a year anniversary. So kind of growing together in this. All those growing pains.

 JJ: So today I thought maybe I could share what the topics are and then you can kind of start wherever you are inspired. Yeah?

 KM: Love it.

 JJ: So the question I have for you is what humanness means to you? How does humanness show up in your work as a clinician? And what poem have you read that speaks to you currently and why?

KM: I think I'll start with part three because it's been kind of marinating on this topic since knowing that we were going to be able to hang out today and explore this. And it's not a poem that I've read recently, but it is a poem that I hold very close to my heart. It's called “Individuation” by Avah Pevlor Johnson. And it is written by Avah Pevlor Johnson as the mother of a playwright, Cindy Lou Johnson, who wrote this play called Brilliant Traces. And so at the beginning of the play is this poem. And within the play, without going into the whole story, it's the coming together of two very scarred, grieving souls. Two people come together in this cabin in the middle of a blizzard, in the middle of the wilderness of Alaska. And they are one of them running away from life, and the other one is hiding from life. And throughout the play, you're brought together through their connectiveness and essentially movement towards healing and growth together as these two complete strangers. So that is the crux of the play's narrative, Brilliant Traces. And the poem is, like I said, written by the mother of the playwright. And I'll just read the poem. It starts with,

If I must be wrung through the paradox,
broken into wholeness,
wrung me around the moon;
pelt me with particles from the dark side

Fling me into space;
hide me in a black hole.

Let me dance with devils on dead stars.
Let my scars lead brilliant traces,

For my highborn soul seeks its hell -
in high places.

And the phrase let my scars leave brilliant traces really resonates with me. And Brilliant Traces is the title of the play. I've been carrying that with me since college when I actually first saw this play. And as you know, but others might not, my first life was as an actor and a performer and a thespian and a theater nerd where I feel my immediate hunger for understanding the human condition got to be totally explored and satiated through play and story and connectivity and making meaning, essentially, of our individual personal traumas and also the stories and traumas of those before us. When I think back to classical theater and these stories that keep being told repeatedly, we get to relive as performers.

So all in a roundabout way of how the poem continues to speak to me in the here and now as I've arrived as becoming a therapist and moving into a different field. Above all, I feel it just really speaks to seeking a higher ground when we are in the throes of immense turmoil and confusion and struggle and that it's not so much just about learning how to deal with the struggle or just to survive the struggle, it's also about finding the portals in the midst of the struggle where we get to connect with beauty and grace and empathy and connectivity. So that last line of the poem, for my high born soul seeks its hell in high places. If I must be thrown into this world, let me do it with just fierce abandon and bravery. And if I'm going to be flung around, which I feel like we all can relate to the past two and a half years of just dealing with unknown and unpredictability and very unprecedented times, that let's just go for it and keep opening ourselves up to the unknown, which I imagine is what that poem kind of invokes.
 

“It’s not so much just about learning how to deal with the struggle or just to survive the struggle, it’s also about finding the portals in the midst of the struggle where we get to connect with beauty and grace and empathy and connectivity.”

— Kate Maher, LMFT

Yeah, so multiple layers there. And like I said, the play itself is one of my favorite plays. It's the story of how people rise above and make meaning of their sadness and grief. And I wholeheartedly feel like that's not possible without connectivity.

So the second part of the question around how I find this humanness showing up in our clinical work is through connectivity and through the meeting of minds and the meeting of experiences together. And it's been such an incredible journey moving away from being a performer on stage and really moving into a really unique sacred space where somebody comes in and sits in front of you and shares themselves with themselves. And we get to as therapists, we get to be along that journey too. We get to be wrung through that paradox too. I think that's a real gift and privilege and challenge and brings me back to that connectivity that I think is so powerfully necessary in humanness.

JJ: Absolutely. That's such a beautiful way to look at it.

KM: Thanks. I wish I wrote it. It doesn't seem to die away. I never seem to outgrow it.

JJ: Each phase of life I would imagine you’d able to come back to it and find ways to connect new meaning.

KM: Absolutely. That's the hope. Yeah. And I'm trying to think of anything else that comes together when I think of what humanness means to me. And I keep trying for the journey towards curiosity. Unfortunately, I'm a little more organized at wanting answers, which I think is part of humanness. But there's a growing edge within me that I continue to try to search with the perspective of just being curious. And that the edge. You never actually arrive to the cliff. It just keeps going and going, you know, with curiosity around why we are feeling, how we are feeling, what has carved into us, what has left scars and brilliant traces and how those keep expanding within ourselves. Yeah, I think that's kind of where I landed so far.

“Unfortunately, I’m a little more organized at wanting answers, but there’s a growing edge within me that I continue to try to search with the perspective of just being curious. And that is the edge. You never actually arrive at the cliff. It just keeps going and going, you know, with curiosity around asking why we are feeling, how we are feeling, what has carved into us, what has left scars and brilliant traces, and how those keep expanding within us. ”

— Kate Maher

I guess I'm thinking more too, around how it shows up in clinical work when I find myself wanting to arrive at answers in the room with clients, probably so much so because I imagine it would provide comfort and peace. And that's my own also growing edge as a therapist, that really there's healing to be made and connection to be fostered without answers.

JJ: And I would imagine as a performer, that curiosity about humanity and the depth is just such a part of you. 

KM: Yes. Especially with theater. I never really crossed over into the film and TV where it felt like very solidified. There was a cut print. It was theater, it was alive every night. You didn't know who was going to drop what. You didn't know if a light was going to go out. You didn't know it was this living, breathing organism that only was going to exist at one time. And if you weren't at that right moment, at that right theater seat, in the right perspective view of the actors on stage, you were never going to have the same performance ever again. And you can never retrieve it again. It just passes by and you take with it what you can. So, yeah, I think that it's something that is ever reaching the targets, always moving, never arrived at one answer or one way.

JJ: Always seeking, always curious. That's kind of a beautiful way to leave that. Always curiosity, the scars leave traces, and and what we make of it, the meaning. I love your idea of connectedness with humanity. And thank you so much for sharing all of that.

KM: Thank you for asking those questions, Jennifer.

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Kate Maher, LMFT, provides a culturally sensitive and affirmative space for individuals and couples in all stages of life. She believes that engaging in our own healing work can provide a new state of consciousness for effective change and growth. Kate believes in using an integrative approach tailored to her client’s needs and values their input in deciding how best to work together in the room. She also works creatively with dreams, symbols, and images that can help her clients tap into, as well as awaken, the inner wise parts of their psyche.

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Jennifer Jackson, MSW, creates a compassionate, non-judgmental space to collaborate on client goals. With an integrative therapy approach, she fosters a connection where meaningful change can occur, allowing clients to live with more ease and to move forward in life empowered by strengths, both old and new. She approaches the work with cultural humility and an anti-oppressive framework that supports client intersectionality, particularly for those who identify as BIPOC, individuals in the LGBTQ+ community, women, and birthing people in all stages of their perinatal journey from preconception to postpartum.

Through Mistakes, There is Beauty: An Interview with Aubrey Koch, LCSW

This month we have a very exciting opportunity to hear from one of our new clinicians, Aubrey Koch, LCSW. Aubrey is interviewed by one of our other newest clinicians, Arpee Simonian, MED, LMFT. Through this “Humans of MHT” interview, we get to hear from Aubrey about what it means for her to be human, a wondrous, yet flawed being, and how she uses those flaws to create something beautiful in herself and with her clients.

You will find the transcript of the interview below.

Arpee Simonian: Hi, Aubrey, how are you today?

Aubrey Koch: I'm doing good Arpee. I'm excited to be here with you. How are you?

AS: I’m doing well. Thank you so much. And thank you for being here today. I'm excited to get to know you a little bit better. You and I are the two newest clinicians here at MHT So I'm looking forward to getting to know you a little bit more intimately.

AK: Me too. I think it'll be a nice opportunity for us to process a little bit and talk about how we review this topic.

AS: I have a couple questions for you here. And my first question is what does humanness mean to you?

AK: Mmm. I think humanness really refers to our capacity to have consciousness and to have a wide breadth within our consciousness. We have the capacity to be creative, to think critically, to love, to be in community in a nuanced way, to experience pleasures, to be in relationship and also to be impacted by our relationships. We have the ability as humans to make mistakes, to have mistakes done to us and be affected by that. And as a result of that, I think something that is also uniquely human is the capacity to create emotional defenses and ways of protecting ourselves from being hurt again when that does happen.

AS: Yeah.

AK: Along those lines, something that I think makes us really special creatures is that we can experience all of those things at one time, you know, we can be loving and we can be important parts of our families and our friends, friend groups, our communities, and we can also make missteps. And the beautiful thing that goes with that is that we can learn and grow and heal from those times. I think that's what makes us unique in our humanness.

AS: Yeah. That's so beautifully put, I love that we can learn and grow and heal from those. That’s so true. I'm wondering, how does humanness show up in your work as a clinician?

AK: That's a great question. I think on one hand, people seek our care because [they want] to more better access to the joyous parts of their humanity I was referencing earlier…. to be content, to be creative, to experience satisfaction in their day to day living; however, because of life circumstances, they are having a difficult time accessing that. And, sometimes people seek therapy because they think that there's something wrong with them or that they're the sum of those more painful parts of being a person. So, my job is to help hold all of those realities at once and to help integrate all the different pieces of our experience and to help heal and grow, like I mentioned in the latter part of the last question.

And I also think another way that humanness shows up is my [own] humanity. I too am a person that  has creativity and uses creativity in my sessions with my clients to help them explore, play, and learn more about their inner worlds. And at the same time I'm prone to making mistakes, just like any other person does. Sometimes I make incorrect interpretations. Sometimes I misunderstand something that my client is trying to tell me or misinterpret something that's happening in the room. In those moments I try to acknowledge them and make space for them because I want to model my humanity to my clients and show them that I can make mistakes, acknowledge it, and I can also feel that I'm still a clinician that is capable of helping them feel better.

AS: Right, Right. I love that. That's, that's such a beautiful sentiment, to allow your clients to appreciate your humanness and your missteps and your failures and that that's okay. Modeling that for them, that acceptance for them. I think that's so beautiful.

AK: Thank you. And even in that same vein, you know, we can use the mistakes I might make to have repair and deepen the relationship. You know, our own interconnectedness might be heightened after something like that.

AS: Yes, absolutely. I think it definitely strengthens the relationship when there is a rupture and you are able to work through it, you are able to repair the relationship.

AK: I completely agree.

AS: That's really beautiful. Thank you for sharing, Aubrey.

AK: Of course.

AS: I'm wondering, is there a certain poem that you've read recently that speaks to you currently? And if you can tell us about the poem or read the poem to us and just talk a little bit about why that speaks to you.

AK: Yeah, absolutely. So this question made me think about one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver.  I brought one of her poems with me. It's called Life Story, and I'd love to read it. It's from her book A Thousand Mornings. This is Life Story:

When I lived under the black Oaks

I felt I was made of leaves.

When I lived by Little Sister Pond,

I dreamed I was the feather of the blue Heron

left on the shore;

I was the pond lily, my root delicate as an artery,

my face like a star,

my happiness brimming.

Later, I was the footsteps that follow the sea.

I knew the tides, I knew the ingredients of the wrack.

I knew the eider, the red-throated loon

with his uplifted beak and his smart eye.

I felt I was the tip of the wave,

the pearl of water on the eider's glossy back.

No, there's no escaping, nor would I want to escape

this outgo, this foot-loosening, this solution

to gravity and a single shape.

Now I am here, later I will be there.

I will be that small cloud, staring down at the water,

the one that stalls, that lifts its white legs,

that looks like a lamb.

AS: That's so, so beautiful. I love Mary Oliver. She's one of my all-time favorite poets.

AK: Mine too. I’m always drawn to her use of natural imagery and applying it to our experience as humans. In this poem, I just love how Mary talks about the different chapters of our [lives] and uses the interface with the environment as a metaphor for that and how important it can be to linger in certain parts of that [and] have it be okay. And, to know that there will be times when things will inevitably look differently. I think it just really speaks to the topic that we've been discussing.

AS: Absolutely, Yeah. That's so beautiful. I love her use of imagery and nature and I think she just has such a beautiful way with words. So thank you for sharing that with us and thank you for reading the poem, and for your time today. I really, I really appreciate you meeting me today and engaging in this discussion.

AK: Of course, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for taking the time to hold space for this conversation.

AS: Of course. Thank you so much, Aubrey.

AK: Thank you, Arpee.

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Aubrey Koch, LCSW, welcomes those going through life’s challenges with warmth and ease. In partnership with her clients, she facilitates an empowering environment where individuals can safely explore inner worlds, examine life stories, and embrace the authentic self. She believes that through psychotherapy clients can develop skills for healthier relationships, deepen creativity, experience the joys of being truly seen and heard, and grow.

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Arpee Simonian, MED, LMFT, has extensive experience working with infants, toddlers, and school-aged children. She takes an attachment-based approach to working with children and families and is passionate about the relationship between parent and child and the importance of creating a strong and healthy attachment from the very beginning.

The Transformation of Heartbreak and a Heart Broken Open: An Interview with Dr. Michelle Harwell, PsyD, LMFT

Through the last year, we have been doing our “Humans of MHT” series, where each of our clinicians has had an opportunity to share a word that resonated from David Whyte’s book, “Consolations.” This month, we have the privilege of hearing from Dr. Michelle Harwell, as she shares with us what it looks like to live our lives with a robustness that breaks our heart open for all the beauty and sincerity that the world has to offer us, even in the heart breaking and tumultuous moments.

Below you will find the interview transcript.

Lauren Furutani: Round two!

Michelle Harwell: Round two!

LF: Michelle’s got the mic. So we are continuing on in our series of the words we chose from David Whyte’s “Consolations.” The words that resonated deeply for ourselves, for our work. So Michelle, tell me about the chapter that you chose. 

MH: Yeah, well the word that I chose, which I am going to cheat a little, because I don’t think I can talk about this word without talking about another word, but, I chose robustness.  I think it is probably a word you have heard me say. I think why I love that word so much, is that it is really about showing up. It is a sturdiness, it is engaging the world wholeheartedly. To also kind of understand that we are not entitled to life going any particular way, that we show up and work with the pieces that we have. 

This year has taught me a deeper understanding of the idea of robustness. I think it is about heartbreak. Living this last year and the collective trauma, physical vulnerability, racial injustice, I think it’s untenable, the amount of heartbreak we’ve experienced collectively. In the last six months myself, I have enduring a couple of heartbreaks personally to me that have ushered in a season of grief. 

I don’t think I can talk about robustness without talking about heartbreak, given the year we’ve lived and what the vulnerability and heartbreak of this year has tutored me in understanding what it means to step into and dialogued with and be robust in like we’ve lived. I think in my younger years, robustness could have a sense of toughness. I can endure this, I can take this, come at me with it. What I believe this year has tutored me in is this idea of robustness and vulnerability. How I’ve been thinking about it of late is how close in degrees our heart break is to our heart breaking open. 

LF: Yeah

MH: Our threshold of our robustness is our ability to stay in conversation with our heartbreak long enough to make it to the other side of breaking open to things like tenderness, to the ability and sincerity to recognize our heart breaking is a sincere nod to true love that has happened, a lived life. If we shut down in that space or are tough and endure it, verses allow ourselves to be broken, allow ourselves to be impacted and grieve what is lost, we gain a deeper sense of integration and longing — being able to hold on to what we want to go after in the world. 

“Our threshold of our robustness is our ability to stay in conversation with our heartbreak long enough to make it to the other side of breaking open to things like tenderness, to the ability and sincerity to recognize our heart breaking is a sincere nod to true love that has happened, a lived life”

— Michelle Harwell

LF: Yeah I love that. I think it takes wisdom to be able to camp out long enough in the pain of heartbreak in order to allow for that to break open something new. It sounds like this year has contributed to some growth for you, a new way of learning to be with yourself robustly in painful parts. I can only imagine that that has impacted how you show up for your clients, that that changes something too, when it clicks for us personally. 

MH: Yeah, I think one of the things I am noticing this year is how easy it is in heartbreak, when we lose the thing we longed for, or we don’t get it, or when we have to reconcile with this illusionment, we tend to ask why, “why me, why this?” We get stuck in this sense of battling the heart break instead of realizing that it is a part of living. If we can move into the vulnerability of living and the fact that we get to try, we get to long, and come back around and try again. I think the idea that I really hope for with my clients, is the hope of ushering them across the threshold, to endure heart break into a new place, integrating it into their human experience. Rather than “why is this happening to me?” it becomes, you know you are getting into heart breaking open territory when it is “why does this happen?” It is not the question you are asking but how you are asking it. 

You can feel a difference when the client and myself can contend with and live the question. Often our clients come in and they ask questions, they’ve experienced trauma, they’ve experienced the hurts and pains of the living and the loving and the loss and pains that happen, and the “why me” happens, but when that shifts into a “why?” 

LF: Curiosity. I think I am hearing curiosity instead of “why!!” 

MH: Yeah, the heaviness of the “why” 

You know what’s interesting, I was thinking of this, Lauren. I am turning 42 in a few days and have you ever listened to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?” 

LF: I have heard of it but no I haven’t. Tell me about it! 

MH: Well, so there is this aspect to the series that they go to the computer and say “what’s the meaning of life?” and it spits out 42. The meaning to life is 42 and basically the whole series is about, “this is the answer, but you don’t know the question you’re asking.” I think about 42 is the answer to existence, but I am living my question, right? I have the answer, but I don’t even know what the question even is. Somehow that speaks to me in the sense of, heartbreak demands that there are questions that aren’t going to be answered. There are ways in which the pains of life don’t make sense. it comes alongside the sense of, with that kind of shattering or lack of knowing or uncertainty, we also get the opportunity to love, to connect, to be awake in the world. Those things dance together. 

LF: Yeah and it is so hard to not have things go the way that you imagined or hoped and it is a humble reminder that we just don’t know how things are going to go, there is uncertainty. A helpful thing for me at some point of realizing is that there is also so much freedom in accepting that we don’t know how things are going to go. This goes back to how you were describing the two different ways of thinking of robustness, the first way feels a little more set in, okay maybe things don’t always go, but I will be okay and i’ll keep going and I will find solutions and I will barrel through and I’ll be strong through it verses a much deeper wisdom in humility, acceptance, allowing for the heart break, for the open possibility of who knows what might come. 

MH: Yeah, the simple truth that in going after love and after things in this world, we are likely to be undone. It is like that Judas Butler quote, is like if we are not undone by the relationships we’re in, what are we doing? That’s the truth of it, that’s the mess of it. It’s all one package. 

David Whyte, when he talks about robustness, is in that coming out of our isolation, moving from heart break, grieving the loss of something, and coming out of the isolation, and coming back out into the world and trying again. With the wisdom that loss can happen again and it’s worth doing over and over again and trying in our half assed attempts or half baked and working it out as we go. It is like the idea of the okayness of not being okay.

LF: Yeah, I think we forget that the experience of grief or letting ourselves grieve and really feel it into heart break is such an honoring act of love, of what we’ve loved, and man that doesn’t feel good necessarily, but also there is something so beautiful about letting ourselves grieve and I don’t know if we think about it that way often enough.

MH: I like how you said that, because I think it connects with that word that was coming to my mind, sincerity. Letting our heart break is to acknowledge the sincerity of our love and our desire, which I think then sets up to this idea of our heart breaking open to the world, to be open to all kinds of splendor and ways in which things cross our path. Yes, hard things like this year and the devastation of really coming to know inequities and racial and social injustice and bearing the weight and the grief of knowing that deeply, to coming back out into the world and breaking open to a deeper call and longing to work hard and be in the mess of cleaning up the uncleanable. There’s no putting humpty dumpty back together again. There’s something noble in the act of staying in it, even when we have been exposed to the shattering mess of humanity. 

“ Letting our heart break is to acknowledge the sincerity of our love and our desire, which I think then sets up to this idea of our heart breaking open to the world, to be open to all kinds of splendor and ways in which things cross our path. ”

— Michelle Harwell

LF: Yeah, that is truly robust. When you talked about allowing it to lead us into a deeper calling, that really resonated. I think living a robust life does allow you to be more deeply connected to your calling and to others and in relationship. The ability to live in it and through it together. That was beautiful.

MH: We’re doing the book of David and even though there’s not a book of Mary, there’s a Mary Oliver quote that I think speaks to this. Sometimes in my life I try to do something so grand and my words become so abstract, but I think what’s so great about poetry is the felt sense of what I’m talking about, the feeling of what it is like to walk through heartbreak and to find a breaking open that is really about robustness, so I thought I would a poem by Mary Oliver that exemplifies that.

So this is called, “Lead” by Mary Oliver and it is almost a storied poem.

Here is a story to break your heart.

Are you willing?

This winter the loons came to our harbor

and died, one by one, of nothing we could see.

A friend told me of one on the shore

that lifted its head and opened

the elegant beak and cried out

in the long, sweet savoring of its life

which, if you have heard it,

you know is a sacred thing,

and for which, if you have not heard it,

you had better hurry to where they still sing.

And, believe me, tell no one just where that is.

The next morning this loon, speckled

and iridescent and with a plan

to fly home to some hidden lake,

was dead on the shore.

I tell you this to break your heart,

by which I mean only

that it break open and never close again

to the rest of the world.

LF: I feel like we could just end there with the words of Mary Oliver and the invitation to allow our hearts to break and break open.

MH: Thank you Lauren

LF: Thanks Michelle for sharing!

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Dr. Michelle Harwell, PsyD, LMFT is an expert trainer, respected speaker, and licensed therapist in trauma and attachment. She is noted for her specialization in areas of development, attachment, trauma, and neuroscience, and her ability to communicate complex topics with clarity and humor. Michelle completed her PhD in Psychoanalysis from The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She received her BA in English Literature from University of Oklahoma, MA in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, and MS in Marriage and Family Therapy from the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology.

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Lauren Furutani, MA, LMFT is an advocate for emotional, physical, spiritual, and social health. She blends her psychodynamic and relational orientation with her down-to-earth personality to bring both complexity and ease to the therapeutic space. Lauren received her MA in Counseling Psychology from National University and BA in Psychology & Social Behavior from University of California Irvine. She serves as the Executive Director at MHT.

The World Shaping Forces of Destiny: An Interview with Betsy Chin, AMFT

For our "Humans of MHT" series feature this month, we will hear from Betsy Chin, AMFT, about destiny and how it shapes our world by both having us shape the world and having the world shape us.

Below you will find the interview.

Chelsea Small: Welcome, Betsy!

Betsy Chin: Hi Chelsea, how are you?

CS: I am good, how are you?

BC: I’m well, thank you for having me

CS: I am excited to talk to you today about humanness for our newsletter series.

BC: Yeah, I am excited too.

CS: My first question for you is, what does humanness mean to you?

BC: For me, when I think about what humanness means to me, it is deeply inextricably linked to our sentience. For me, sentience is a multidimensional subjective phenomenon of consciousness and being capable of suffering and having compassion. Being human includes our ability to ponder and reflect, our capacity to love, create, feel, connect, communicate, generate, and empathize. Those are all parts of our humanness.

CS: That is so beautifully put. It feels like you’re really speaking about our capacity to think and to feel.

BC: Yeah, definitely. Those elements that makes our existence, that separates us from all the other elements that exist, that deepness in ourselves to have capacity, the capacity to see, feel others, have emotions, have thoughts, have connectedness.

CS: You chose the chapter on destiny from David Whyte’s “Consolations” and I am curious what about destiny speaks to you. What about that chapter called to you and what meaning do you make of it?

BC: Yes, so the book by David Whyte called “Consolations” had all of these wonderful words that headed each chapter and I was drawn to the word destiny because it has and implies a pathway, a sense of destination. Inherent in it, it has a concept of both life purpose and perhaps alluding to a force, or powers, or energies outside of ourselves intertwined with our internal sense of agency or free will. When people talk about destiny, they talk about, “is this our destiny, is this something that I am either following on a journey.” The way David Whyte presents it in the chapter, he also talks about the way destiny creates a conscientiousness of shaping our world, like the way we are shaped by the world and then in turn the way we shape the world is in constant engagement. Then by our shaping, the forces turn around and shape us. I just really love that internal agency and external force in our lives as a pathway

CS: Yeah, I was thinking as you were describing that, it feels like you’re really speaking to the narrative and conversation that is born out of that relationship between internal and external.

BC: Yeah, absolutely. We hear these callings and voices within ourselves and pulls often greater than ourselves. A sense of destiny grants us possibilities, not just looking in our world at what is, but what can be. That constant internal modifying and balancing.

CS: It feels so deeply related to our work. I wonder how destiny and humanness show up in your work as a clinician.

BC: These two concepts both of them are the meaning we make around our destiny and our humanness shows up in my work every day because to be able to reflect and ponder and have compassion and connectedness, is that journey in which our clients come and in which the therapist comes into the room as an ally in this person and sees this sentient being in front of me that has the full humanness of love, connection, generativity, creation, suffering. All of these elements we were discussing earlier about humanness. The word destiny brings forth that narrative of the internal external dialogue of forces constantly in motion and engaging one another in the therapeutic space that is created. I feel that it supports and facilitates and guides the pathway the person is on. Destiny and humanness is present in every moment of my clinical work.

CS: That was beautifully put.

BC: I get the sense of when I look at someone’s narrative of their path, their story provides a sense of coherence or purpose that can be revealed when connect to our compassion and turn that humanness for compassion inwards to self-compassion, which we all can be out of balance with or missed on our journey.

CS: It feels like you’re talking about what happens in your work between you and the person you’re working with and also how that becomes internalized and becomes part of themselves and part of their internal process. The way it goes from being a relational process to being an internal process.

BC: Absolutely and as an ally to that person’s curiosity of that discovery of deepening that conversation with themselves. As you said, that internalization of both what’s happening externally and then shaping and molding the internal as well.

CS: That’s lovely. Thank you so much for sharing your mind about humanness and destiny with me today. I really enjoy hearing your perspective and a bit about your work.

BC: Thank you Chelsea, this was such a nice experience to ponder on. We don’t often have time in our busy lives to talk about the qualities of self-compassion, awareness, and humanness. It was such a pleasure, thank you.

CS: Thanks Betsy, bye.

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Betsy Chin, AMFT, supports her clients on their paths towards authentic selfhood by exploring their truths and strengths. Betsy carefully considers the cultural context and lived experience of her clients when helping them navigate the complexities of their stories and relationships. Her tenured professional background in the arts also informs Betsy’s approach to her therapeutic work — she joins her clients in a creative process of meaning-making and change.

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Chelsea Small, LCSW, believes in the transformative power of the therapeutic relationship to create a safe and fertile place for all aspects of the self to be witnessed, explored, and integrated in the service of growth. She understands psychic pain as a message from the parts of the self that are calling for attention and healing. She believes in the wisdom of the therapist-client dyad to attend to those parts and experience the full range of what it means to be human in all of its depth and beauty.