Dusty Bookshelves

Author: TK

  • Timestamp

    Everything everywhere all at oncewas incredible. I’m a trauma therapist (LCSW, EMDR Certified and a Consultant-in-Training, Trauma Resiliency Model Certified, and Perinatal Mental Health Certified) and seeing it through my professional expertise was an even more powerful experience. Trauma doesn’t have the same ability to grasp time and space, so what this movie represents is very much the way the brainstem reacts in the here-and-now to past events and with responses that can never be (stuck somatic survival responses). In trauma reprocessing, we endeavor to “timestamp” the traumatic experience so that our body can finally believe that the past is in the past and still not happening in the here-and-now. We have all different fractured parts of ourselves that we can slowly allow to come back into alignment. Whether the filmmakers knew it or not, this movie is the perfect example of the neurological and physiological Trauma response. I left the movie weeping because finally my husband was able to see what I do for my clients (minus the martial arts). This movie should be screened for every psychotherapy graduate student.

    -Facebook Comment

  • Graduation

    Applied for graduation from my masters degree this spring

    #EyesOnThePrize #GMTFOH

  • innately valuable and powerful

    I think I’ve learned something similar through the discussion around everything happening at Twitter this year. Social media platforms think that they own the intimate relationships between people, simply because they are able to transmit and collect the data of that relationship.

    I’m a millennial who experienced the transformation of what human socialization was before MySpace and what it was after it. I’ve known digitally mediated relationships since I was in early in my social development, all the way back to middle school twenty some years ago.

    The ubiquity of what it’s become made it hard to see, because I’ve never really known life without this technology. It took a while to teach myself no one except me owns any data about myself; my marriage to my husband and partner of 13 years, or access to my social network and resources. That very fact is what makes me and my queer family innately valuable and powerful.

    I’ve realized that I don’t need to a accept a life that requires I continually come out at as gay to the world, because I’m capable of creating a world where I decide whom to let in.

    At the end of the day, I’ve learned that social media can’t exist without me, and I get to tell it what I need it for —

    NOT the other way around, no matter what they say.

  • Thoughts on the New Year

  • Running into a new year

  • The Coming New Chapter

    2023 is going to be a banner year. Excited for the post-grad school chapter of our lives that is starting very soon —

    We’re going to be making a lot of big moves this year, and I have never been more ready!

  • Mom’s Last Chemo Treatment

  • I am safe, here in my home.

    We got a massage through our hotel. It was an Andean Herb massage from two women who spoke Spanish. As the hour passed, she worked through the tension points throughout my whole body — I felt as if she were pushing, rolling, coaxing it out of me.

    At the nape of my neck lay all of the weight of my work.

    Each calf was my community – the left my family, my right friends.

    I thought about who I can choose to do emotional work for, how nothing is lost from my explorations before today. I’m trying to let go all of my expectations of who I should be and what it should look like.

    I just can’t.

    As she kept massaging me, I brought myself down into the feeling.

    I reminded myself that my body is here, and it is my home. These thoughts are just visitors, and I am safe.

    I am safe, here in my home.

  • You hold a unique vision

    Create what your intuition is asking you to create. Do this as an act of service. You have no idea who you may end up helping or even the lives that you may save by simply following the truth of your heart. Don’t let fear stop you from listening to your inner calling. Don’t let an unclear path discourage you from taking steps into the unknown. The greatest you arises when you gently start embracing the space beyond your comfort zone. You don’t need to have all of the answers right now to eventually be successful. You just need to be willing to take one step at a time. Embrace the challenge. Remember how strong you are and how much you have already overcome. You don’t need to move fast, even moving slowly can get you to where you want to go. Let yourself live in your power.You hold a unique vision and that is your gift to the world.

    Yung Pueblo