Joseph Coffey said...
Thanks Ellen for sharing so generously with us. I don't have the time, courage, or perspective to write right now. But I was wondering: why do you think these stories aren't shared? It seems that you have a thesis that in order to confront hard times we need to have stories of those who have confronted them. Why don't we have them? Or, more properly, why don't we tell them?
Many of your story tellers have some sort of cultural backing whether it be American Indian, Catholic etc... This sort of backing is evaporating from the American conscience. Is this lack of stories a purely American affliction? Everyone's story is now isolated in small suburban homes?Do we not tell them because we just don't want to revisit the worst parts of our life? Because we don't really get over it, that there is always some left over which remains untransformed, and instead we just go on?
12/12/2006 1:48 PM
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Life isn't as scary as they tell us. This blog is a collection of stories from women I have met who faced hard times and transformed them. Learn with them to write your own survival story for hard times.
Readings and Bookstores
Support Independent Bookstores. Buy "Blowing On Embers at:
Analog Books-- Berkeley, CA.
Black Oak Books-- Berkeley, CA.
Book Passages -Corte Madera and San Francisco
Great Good Place for Books Oakland, California
Kepler's Bookstore Menlo Park, California
Fact and Fiction, Missoula, Montana
Shakespeare and Co., Missoula, Montana
For more info:
Ellen@Berkeleyfamilytherapy.com
Analog Books-- Berkeley, CA.
Black Oak Books-- Berkeley, CA.
Book Passages -Corte Madera and San Francisco
Great Good Place for Books Oakland, California
Kepler's Bookstore Menlo Park, California
Fact and Fiction, Missoula, Montana
Shakespeare and Co., Missoula, Montana
For more info:
Ellen@Berkeleyfamilytherapy.com
About Ellen
Blowing on Embers: Stories for Hard Times --Available now
To order go to:
http://www.amazon.com
or to:
http://www.llumina.com/store//blowingonembers.htm
I am a Clinical Psychologist with a family and community practice in Berkeley, California. I specialize in working with families facing major upheavals. To learn more about me go to http://www.berkeleyfamilytherapy.com/.
To order go to:
http://www.amazon.com
or to:
http://www.llumina.com/store//blowingonembers.htm
I am a Clinical Psychologist with a family and community practice in Berkeley, California. I specialize in working with families facing major upheavals. To learn more about me go to http://www.berkeleyfamilytherapy.com/.
I grew up protected and without survival stories, and so I didn't have a map when catastrophe struck me and my family. I went searching for such a map and found it in the survival stories of others. These new stories gave me what I will need when hard times come again. This blog tells my story and the stories of the women I met on my search.
Keepers
Florence, a Lakota Sioux, from South Dakota, who has lived her entire life on the Oglala reservation; and Janie, an Irish Catholic lay nun from St Louis, who came from a prominent family that was undone by alcohol and drugs. Although breaking rules when they had to, as keepers both women reached back into the history of their families, communities, and traditions to develop stories of survival. They use these stories to steady themselves and to provide a nurturing presence for three or more generations of their family members.
Seekers
Eva, a Yugoslavian immigrant who had to move away from family, friends, and country, now lives in Oakland; and Joan, a long-time Californian, born into a family of wealth, who from the age two has faced many family losses. Seekers, having known disruptions since childhood that left them often on their own, rely every day on independence and flexibility to construct new possibilities for themselves.
Teachers
Kaethe, an East Coast psychotherapist, writer, and political activist who has lived with serious life-threatening illnesses for many years; and Suraya, a women’s activist from Afghanistan who has been tortured in prison and lives in fear for her life due to her political beliefs and actions. They connect their personal suffering to the suffering of others, and work actively against the negative effects of silencing peoples’ stories of illness and injustice.
No comments:
Post a Comment