For seventeen years, I have done my best to explain the world to my son, and my son to the world. For the longest time, I would simply shout, “Welcome to Autismland!” as a shorthand to explain his startling behaviors in public. Then, as he got bigger, it just became easier not to go out…
As a female marine, I learned that the battle within the mind determines one’s overall health. Although I experienced combat duty, the internal battle started years before Iraq. The emotional conflict began in my early childhood. At age 4, my life changed forever when my parents divorced. I struggled growing up, and my brother and…
For the Girls Up motivational talk with Healing in Arts, I began by sharing how, as a 22-year-old, I was considering an art graduate program on the West coast. But I decided to reset my values and goals, changing directions. Instead, I went to Japan, to teach Japanese people how to speak English. After my…
We shared one of our community projects and the corresponding lesson about swimming against the flow of culture with artist Dawn Baker from Alert Ministries. Alert creatively services incarcerated teenage boys at a Dallas juvenile detention center. Due to increased restrictions because of the pandemic, we encouraged Alert to actively seek permission to get the…
We are honored to create Stories, a collaboration with Youth For Christ and MDV Housing, located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. For this collective project, students within YFC’s program painted their own unique story on a wooden tile to include in the collage. The work emphasizes the importance of our personal stories and how our narratives define…
Divorce may be easy to obtain, but it wasn’t always that way. In 1979, Michigan’s law stated that a couple needed to wait a year before obtaining a divorce. Why? Because even the state recognized that everyone benefited when families stayed together. Plus, divorce always incurs a cost, though I’m not talking about dollars. A…