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Week 1 – Writing as writing, writing as loving, writing as work, writing as play

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Okay, so today is my first “official” day back at work. I’m excited to be going back.   I’ve been working on syllabi, talking with other faculty, and thinking a lot about what it will be like to teach during the next few weeks – some online, and some in person!   While I often think of my job as primarily being “teaching,” my time over sabbatical also helped me to understand the role of writing in my job.   My writing can inform my teaching, my writing is informed by my teaching, my writing is a way of thinking, and my writing is my art. I think I felt teaching – as in being in front of a class, developing and delivering curriculum, facilitating experiences – was my primary job because it is highly prized at Lesley.   Lesley College began as a women’s college and as a kindergarten teacher’s training school.   There is an interesting description of Edith Lesley Wolfard, the founder of Lesley U, in a book called A century of innovation: Lesley University.   Again, it’s interestin

Day 100 – Celebrations!!

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Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash Day 100 – Celebrations!!   It’s my last day of sabbatical and I am proud of the work I did!   I kept track of this blog for 100 days – I didn’t write every day, but I did keep up with the process!   I wrote about the things that were capturing my attention and imagination. I tried to think through difficult concepts and not step away from complication or hard-to-convey ideas.   One of my main goals was to make my research practice transparent – and I feel I did just that! This is how I work. If you were to read every post in this blog over the past 100 days, you’d have an up-close picture of my method and process   I spent the day thinking about the Supervision course I plan to teach in the Summer/fall/spring.   It’s a year-long course that accompanies students in their 2 nd field placement. For many students, this happens in their third year of the program.   I usually teach the first-year courses, and the first placement Supervision course,

Day 98 and 99 – Holding the tension

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Day 98 and 99 – I love paradoxes and dialectics.   From my apple dictionary:   Paradox: par·a·dox| ˈperəˌdäks | noun  •       a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true :  in a paradox, he has discovered that stepping back from his job has increased the rewards he gleans from it .  •       a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory:  a potentially serious conflict between quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity known as the information paradox .  •       a situation, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities:  the mingling of deciduous trees with elements of desert flora forms a fascinating ecological paradox .   Dialectic: di·a·lec·tic| ˌdīəˈlektik |  Philosophy noun (also dialectics)

Day 97 – “Toward a decolonial model of well-being” – Raúl Quiñones-Rosado

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Photo by Jack Skinner on Unsplash Day 97 – As I continue to try to define “well-being” in a way that attends to the critical social justice model, I came across this exploration of the model in Quiñones-Rosado’s (2020) chapter, Liberation psychology and racism:   Common to these non-Western paradigms for well-being, human beings are conceived as integral to, and in a sustainable relationship with, all other beings, elements, the Earth itself, and beyond. Human well-being occurs in the context of, and is dependent on, an individual’s personal and a people’s collective ability to meet challenges and adversities in their environment through the intelligent, skillful, and ethical use of strengths and resources available to them. Person and community coexist—dynamically, interdependently, and integrally. (p. 54)   Quiñones-Rosado is suggesting that one way to begin to practice a decolonial approach to liberation psychology is by recognizing models of “well-being, conceptions, fra

Day 95 and 96 – Established vs. emerging theories of ExAT

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Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash Day 95 and 96 – For the past several years, I have been proposing that Expressive Arts Therapy has 5 established theories and even more emerging theories. Several years ago, I wrote a revision of a chapter I wrote back in 2005.     One section of this revised chapter – which was edited and will not be included in the new chapter coming out reads:   These foundational theories within expressive arts therapy grew out of work published beginning in the early 1990s (Atkins, 2002; Halprin, 2003; Knill, Barba, & Fuchs, 1995; Levine, 1992; Levine, 1995; Levine & Levine, 1999; McNiff, 1992; Rogers, 1993).   Knill, Barba, and Fuchs (1995) note, “intermodal expressive therapy is a discipline unto itself, with its own theoretical framework and focus” (emphasis in original, p. 16). In their text, “Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy,” Levine and Levine (1999) claim that expressive arts therapists are “specialists in intermodality; that is,

Day 94 - if love was possible

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Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash If love was possible             on the day after Roe v Wade was overturned   This is one thing I know for sure I could not go back I could not live Where I was not loved   By the people most responsible For loving me   Mother brother   It was my life Or hers   Of course, there is no telling Whether she would have been A she   My first child was born On my birthday I remember thinking I will never be The main attraction again But oh, how I love him   Now I am a mother It is my responsibility To love   We have a fighting chance   She was different I was not able to Share my life With her   It would have killed Even the possibility I had of living Much less loving   Which is all I had At the time   I wanted to live Even as I mourned the death Of the only one who really Loved me   Father As cruel as he was   Then, I could not be a mother Even

Day 93 – Sustainability and radical relationality

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Photo by Victor on Unsplash Day 93 – Sustainability and radical relationality   Human societies are guided by stories people tell one another. The narrative that has brought us to the present situation is that of progress made possible by economic growth and advances in technology. According to this tale, humanity is steadily moving toward a brighter future. When it comes to material prosperity, particularly in certain parts of the world, this is not a mere fairytale. However, in many other aspects, the story has lost its credibility, as the price of the so-called progress has proven to be far too high. (Helne, 2021, p. 220)   I read a great article today called, Well-being for a better world: The contribution of a radically relational and nature-inclusive conception of well-being to the sustainability transformation (Helne, 2021).   In it, Helne, a Finnish social policy maker, proposes that we question our conceptions of the “good life” and ask how our definitions of well-bei