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Gratitude As a Habit
Each year, around the Thanksgiving Holiday in the US, I try and write something about thankfulness and remind survivors that no matter what, we all have something to be thankful for, even if it’s just that we are still here, surviving, with hope for the future. This year, however, I’ve been struggling with the idea,…
The Benefits of Online Holidays
This Christmas wasn’t exactly a Norman Rockwell painting for me. I actually spent most of the week sick with a nasty head cold. I was working from home, so mostly I had my laptop in bed with me. Given the timing of the holiday, our work schedules, and the distance to our families, my wife…
Happy Holidays
From one survivor to another, have a very happy, healthy, and peaceful holiday. Or, at the very least, enjoy the time away from the hustle of the work day and look forward to a new year of healing in 2015.
On Martin Luther King Day
When I think of the famous speeches of Dr. King, I am always reminded of this fact. We have always seen certain groups of people as less deserving of the rights we willingly claim for ourselves. Be it blacks, immigrants, prisoners, those with mental health struggles or disabilities, members of the LGBTQ community, or addicts, it is far too easy to look at them with judgment and disdain. Maybe even fear. They’re different than me. What happens to them is not my concern. They probably brought it on themselves anyway.
Those are all too easy to say. The hard work is in looking at people who are different from us, who live different lives, make different choices, and recognize our common humanity. That’s what Dr. King was talking about. Not being blind to our differences but being aware that we are all human and deserve respect based on that. So when a black man is lynched, or a prisoner dies from a lack of medical care, or someone struggling dies from suicide without access to mental healthcare, or because their own family won’t accept them for who they are, we fail as a society. We fail to see human life as human life.
