Desperate to Help Your Friend in Crisis? First Steps To Bringing Comfort

When a friend is depressed, has a major life change or is grieving, it is very tempting to want to rescue them from their sadness, anxiety and pain.

To shake them out of it.
To make them laugh.
To make everything normal.
To help them climb out of their darkness and brush off their fears, regrets, anger and despair.

We want them to feel better and feel alive. We want them to be part of our world which is familiar, comfortable and safe to us.

We want to tell our friend it's all going to be ok.
They will get over it.
They will move on.
This pain won't feel this deep, this stabbing, this visceral forever.


And I'm sure if they could they would want to return to that normality too.

They would desperately want the difficult times to pass quickly so that they could join you in your revelry.

They don't want to feel this angst any more than you can bear to watch it.

6 Ways to Bring Light Into a Dark World

Our world is in a period of great turmoil.

Negative clouds have thrown shadows over the goodness in the world.   

 The 24/7 news is bombarding us with images of hatred, death and destruction.

In addition to a daily diet of shootings, rape and racism, the news is now replete with the horrific actions of terrorist groups: ISIS, Boko Haram and Hamas. Children have been kidnapped and murdered. Planes have disappeared or been shot down. Overt anti-semitism has returned to Europe. And Ebola has reared its ugly head. 

Facebook, twitter and emails are filled to the brim with negativity and vitriolic, hateful comments.

We are feeling angry, afraid, anxious and depressed.

We feel like helpless witnesses to a world that is out of balance.

How can we temper this darkness  so that we don't sink into an abyss?

How can we possibly make a difference?

Warning: Hurricane Coming! How to deal with this and the storms of growing up

From CBS evening News

With Hurricane Sandy descending on the East coast of the USA over the next 24 hours, we have been busy preparing for the "perfect storm". 

In our house it is colliding with the deadline for the first round of college applications. (Nov 1- aaagh!).  It is also Halloween and unless you have taken a trip to another planet you probably know it is the last week of campaigning before the US election. At least the 24/7 news shows have something other than the election to talk about....

12 Ways to Help Children Face Their Fears

With the launch of the Olympics in a few weeks, it occurred to me that if there was an Olympic event for worrying, our family would definitely have a chance of winning the gold medal. After all to become champions you need to get a lot of practice.

The Power of Passion

  This past weekend our middle son Aron received his EMT certification. An EMT is an Emergency Medical Technician who works on an ambulance and fire truck.  It is a process that began eleven months ago, when Aron joined the Rockville Volunteer  Fire Department.  He has volunteered at the fire station and on the ambulance  every Wednesday night after school until 11.00pm, juggling 11th grade schoolwork and his father’s illness and brain surgery.  He has  gone on  emergency calls from 5.00pm until 7.00am the next day, on Saturday nights and during  school breaks. He has attended calls to attempted suicide victims, car crashes and sick infants, fall and  stroke victims and a pregnant woman whose  water had broken. On top of that time commitment, he has also  completed 131 hours of classroom  training and 12 exams  to become a state of Maryland certified EMT.

In this age of helicopter parenting and being connected to our children 24/7 via phone, text, email and Facebook,  it came as quite  a shock to us, to wave Aron off,at the age of 16  into the belly of the local fire station.