Tuning In March 2022

Each month I post an update called Tuning In on what I'm up to and ideas for grounding, connection, and discovering vitality in your life. Most of the links on this post are informational only, but a few are affiliate links that help me keep up my website. 

Events:

Facilitating: 
Center for Chronic Illness - Web-Based Rare Chronic Illness Support Group March 1st, 2022 at 4pm PST
Center for Chronic Illness - Living with Thyroid Eye Disease Support Group Saturday, March 20th, 2022 at 9am PST
Center for Chronic Illness - Parenting Cystinosis Web-Based Support Group, Tuesday March 15th, 2022 at 2:30pm PST
Center for Chronic Illness - Living with Cystinosis Web-Based Support Group, Tuesday March 15, 2022 at 4pm PST

National Days: 
March 1st is National Self-Injury Awareness Day 
March 4th is National Employee Appreciation Day 
March 8th is International Women's Day 
March 9th is National Registered Dietician Nutritionist Day
March 10th is Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day 
March 13th is Daylight Savings Time 
March 14th is Pi Day & National Napping Day 
March 15th is World Social Work Day 
March 17th is St. Patrick's Day 
March 19th is Certified Nurses Day 
March 20th Spring Begins 
March 21st is World Down Syndrome Day 
March 23rd is National Puppy Day 
March 24th is National Equal Pay Day 
March 30th is National Doctors Day & Manatee Appreciation Day 
 
National Weeks: 
March 6th-March 12th is International Women's Week & National School Social Workers Week

National Months: 
National Women's History Month 
Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month 
National Brain Injury Awareness Month 
​National Social Work Month 

Dear Valued Community,

March means the official arrival of spring if you live north of the equator. The time when flowers start to bloom and buds arrive on the trees. In Seattle, mid-March through mid-April is one of my favorite times of year—cherry blossom season. All over the city rows of trees sprout beautiful pink blossoms. While we continue to live with so much uncertainty, it is certain that seasons will change and the vegetation will grow. Take a moment to reflect on this transition and notice what it is like for you as the seasons change. 

With gratitude, 

Kerry ​

Daffodils in West Seattle

Nervous System Healing: 

​Ideas for Grounding: Because transitions have the potential to be disruptive, it is even more important to ground when the seasons change or Daylight Savings Time begins. Examine your routine for ways to stay grounded in it. Slowly adjust to the time change and slowly adjust your activity level from the quieter months of the winter to the more active months of the spring and summer. Notice what throws off your routine and how long it takes you to return to it. This will help you have a better idea of how much you can stretch it at any given time.  
​
Ideas for Connection: Here we go again. It feels like a Merry Go 'Round we can't get off. As we enter into the warmer months and the number of covid cases decline, we again hope that connection will be safer. I will offer some of the same advice as in spring of 2021. Move slowly. You don't have to see everyone and do everything all at once. Move in the rhythm that feels right and sustainable for you. 
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Ideas for Creating Vitality: Spring is synonymous with vitality. Vitality is feeling alive and in spring so much is coming alive. This is a good time to tune into the vitality of nature. Maybe you want to try your hand at gardening or explore houseplants. Maybe it's more walks outside or even just opening your windows when the weather allows. Find small ways to connect to the life-giving properties of the natural world.

Why grounding, connection, and vitality? Because these are the ways we regulate the nervous system. Spending intentional time in a regulated state allows our nervous system to wire in the direction of safety and aliveness. It's a big piece of the puzzle of how we repair the survival response of trauma.

Boats on Camano Island, Washington

What I'm Reading Related for Therapy: Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma: Lifting the Burdens of the Past by Sharon Stanley 

"Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma provides psychotherapists and other helping professionals with a new body-based clinical model for the treatment of trauma. This model synthesizes emerging neurobiological and attachment research with somatic, embodied healing practices. Tested with hundreds of practitioners in courses for more than a decade, the principles and practices presented here empower helping professionals to effectively treat people with trauma while experiencing a sense of mutuality and personal growth themselves." 

What I'm Reading for Fun: Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe 

"A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for the their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin." 

(I'm a proud member of the sloth reading club, so what I'm reading will not always change monthly) ​

Podcast Episode with Impact: Maintenance Phase "Anti-Fat Bias" 
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TV Show I'm Watching: Inventing Anna on Netflix 

Movie I'm Watching: CODA on AppleTV

Song on Repeat: "Surface Pressure" by Jessica Darrow from Disney's Encanto
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Projects I'm Working On: Self-development book on trauma and worthiness, book of poetry, ongoing content for various publications. Considering next steps in career training—psychedelic assisted therapy, HeartMath training,  biblio/poetry therapy training, or yoga teacher training. ​

Scooter being curious about Puget Sound

Poem: 
​
For Someone Awakening to the Trauma of His or Her Past
by John O’Donohue 

For everything under the sun there is a time. 
This is the season of your awkward harvesting, 
When pain takes you where you would rather 
not go, 

Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place
You had forgotten you knew from the inside out; 
And a time when that bitter tree was planted

That has grown always invisibly beside you
And whose branches your awakened hands
Now long to disentangle from your heart. 

You are coming to see how your looking often
    Darkened
When you should have felt safe enough to fall
    toward love,
How deep down your eyes were always owned by 
    something 

That faced them through a dark fester of thorns
Converting whoever came into a further figure of
    the wrong;
You could only see what touch you as already 
    torn.

Now the act of seeing begins your work of
    mourning. 

And you memory is ready to show you everything, 
Having waiting all these years for you to return and 
    know. 

Only you know where the casket of pain is interred. 
You will have to scrape through all the layers of 
    covering. 
And according to your readiness, everything will 
    be open. 

May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate
    guide. 
Who can accompany you through the fear and grief. 
Until your heart has wept its way to your true self. 

As your tears fall over that wounded place, 
May they wash away your hurt and free your heart. 
May your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound. 

So that for the first time you can walk away from 
    that place, 
Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and
    freed, 
And feel the clear, free air bless your new face. 

Meme of the Month: A wish for you...​

​Quote of the Month: "Like wildflowers, grow in all the places people thought you never would." - Unknown 
​
​I'd love to hear how you are grounding, connecting, and creating vitality. What is helping you feel calm and alive? Or comment below on what books, podcasts, songs, shows, poetry, or quotes are resonating with you right now.