“Evolution is speeding up, not time.
Consciousness is evolving, becoming aware of itself as creation's mentor.
Children are evolution's front edge. They push at boundaries... challenge the status quo...irritate convention.
That is their job...to set free all that sullies the human heart and blinds the mind to the relationship between the Creator and the Created."
~ P.M.H. Atwater~
MY WORK ... MY PASSION
• Certified Transpersonal Hypnotherapist ; Past experiences: Dream Analysis /10 Years Experience •Psychotherapist / Use of Gestalt, Jungian, Zen, Reality and Energy Therapies /10 Years Experience •EMDR • Men and Their Journey: the neuroscience of the male brain, and the implications in sexuality, education and relationship • Women: Their Transformation and Empowerment • ATOD (Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs) / 21 years experience •Ordained Interfaith Minister & Official Celebrant • Social Justice Advocate • Child and Human Rights Advocate • Spiritual Guide and Intuitive • Certified Reiki Practitioner • Mediation / Conflict Resolution • “Intentional Love” Parenting Strategy Groups • Parenting Workshops • Coaching for parents of Indigo, Crystal, and Rainbow Children • International Training: Israel & England • Critical Incident Stress Debriefing • Post-911 and Post-Katrina volunteer
MSW - UNC Chapel Hill
BSW - UNC Greensboro
With immense love I wish Happy Birthday to my three grandchildren!
May 22: Brannock
May 30: Brinkley
June 12: Brogan
All three have birthdays in the same 22 days of the year ....what a busy time for the family!
"An Unending Love"
This blog and video is devoted and dedicated to my precious daughter Jennifer, my grand daughters Brogan and Brinkley, and my grand son Brannock. They are hearts of my heart. Our connection through many lives..... is utterly infinite.
The Definition of Genius
"THRIVE"
https://youtu.be/Lr-RoQ24lLg
"ONLY LOVE PREVAILS" ...."I've loved you for a thousand years; I'll love you for a thousand more....."
As we are in the winter of our lives, I dedicate this to Andrew, Dr. John J.C. Jr. and Gary W., MD, (who has gone on before us). My love and admiration is unfathomable for each of you..........and what you have brought into this world.....so profoundly to me.
The metaphors are rich and provocative; we're in them now. This world is indeed disappearing, and the richest eternal world awaits us!
The intensity, as was in each of the three of us, is in yellow!
In my heart forever.........
Slowly the truth is loading
I'm weighted down with love
Snow lying deep and even
Strung out and dreaming of
Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold Don't it just look so pretty This disappearing world
We're threading hope like fire Down through the desperate blood
Down through the trailing wire
Into the leafless wood
Night falling on the city Quite something to behold Don't it just look so pretty This disappearing world This disappearing world
I'll be sticking right there with it I'll be by your side
Sailing like a silver bullet Hit 'em 'tween the eyes Through the smoke and rising water Cross the great divide Baby till it all feels right
Night falling on the city
Sparkling red and gold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world This disappearing world
This disappearing world This disappearing world
"The degree of our enlightenment is the degree of passion that we will have for the whole world." ~The Greystone Mandala
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." ~ Winston Churchill
Kant: "We are not rich by what we possess, but what we can do without."
In “Conversations with God”, by Neale Donald Walsch, there is a warning I think of. I refer to it as the Atlantis passage, and I've quoted it a few times before." As I have said, this isn't the first time your civilization has been at this brink,"
God tells Walsch. "I want to repeat this, because it is vital that you hear this. Once before on your planet, the technology you developed was far greater than your ability to use it responsibly. You are approaching the same point in human history again. It is vitally important that you understand this. Your present technology is threatening to outstrip your ability to use it wisely. Your society is on the verge of becoming a product of your technology rather than your technology being a product of your society. When a society becomes a product of its own technology, it destroys itself."
Emotion regulation skills appear to increase during adulthood. Older adults report fewer negative emotions than younger persons. Older adults report more emotional stability and well-being than younger persons. Older adult may be more savvy at navigating interpersonal disagreements than younger persons. Older adults may pay more attention to the good and less attention to the bad. When older adults experience a negative emotion, they may be able to recover more quickly than younger persons.
Thus, at first glance, there seems to be an emotional “mellowing out” with maturity and an increased and potentially deliberate ability to see the world through rose-colored glasses. Given these data, it is interesting to learn that older adults may react with stronger emotions than younger persons in some situations.
Indeed, bad events may hit older adults harder than younger persons. In studies in which researchers try to create a negative mood in their participants, older adults can react with stronger emotions than younger persons. This is particularly true if the investigators use negative stimuli that are relevant to older adults, such as stimuli about loss or injustice. In my research, we find that older adults react to films about loss with greater negativity than younger persons.
A recent study by Streubel and Kunzmann (2011) suggests that emotional arousal is a factor that needs more attention in aging research. That is, a focus on positive and negative emotions and aging may be too limited; rather a focus on the strength of emotions also is needed. In circumstances in which strong emotions are aroused, older adults may not be able to regulate their emotions as well as younger persons. Indeed, in our data, where we see older adults reacting with stronger negative emotions than younger persons, the films are very powerful and highly relevant to older persons.
Changes in emotions with age are complex. Older adulthood is not simply a time of emotional well-being and tranquility. Strong emotions exist and reactions to important life events may increase with age, rather than diminish. More research along these lines is needed for practitioners to learn how to help older adults navigate emotionally powerful events in their lives
Children traveling with a caravan of migrants from Central America play on the beach near the border fence between Mexico and the U.S., prior to preparations for an asylum request in the U.S., in Tijuana, Mexico April 29, 2018. (Jorge Duenes/Reuters)
That’s what you would conclude from this USA Today opinion piece headlined, “The feds lost — yes, lost — 1,475 migrant children.” It’s a piece that’s a pretty good example of how “fake news” works — there’s some factual basis for the claim, but it’s exaggerated or misunderstood, and then fed into the maw of the perpetual outrage cycle, in this case about the alleged extreme carelessness and heartlessness of the Trump administration toward migrant children.
Some background: As we all know, in recent years there has been a flood of “unaccompanied children” (UAC) showing up at the border. The U.S. government attempts to unite UAC with a parent or close relative in the U.S. The HHS program to do this is longstanding and long pre-dated the Trump administration.
Given the size of the migrant flow, the scale of this task is enormous. The USA Today piece cites this congressional testimony by HHS official Steven Wagnerwho oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) as its source. Wagner relates the numbers:
In fiscal year (FY) 2017, 40,810 children were referred to ORR from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In FY 2018 (through March), we have had 21,574 referrals. Although March and April of FY 2017 had the lowest referrals since FY 2012, referrals started to slowly increase in May of 2017, and today are significantly higher than just a couple of months ago. To illustrate, in March 2017, ORR had 755 referrals; while in March 2018, ORR had 4,204 referrals.
Most are placed with parents or close relatives:
In FY 2017, children typically stayed in ORR custody for 51 days and so far in FY 2018 (through March) average length of stay has been 56 days. ORR releases the majority of UAC to sponsors. In FY 2017, ORR released 93 percent of children to a sponsor. Of those, ORR released 49 percent to parents, 41 percent to close relatives, and 10 percent to other-than-close relatives or non-relatives. In FY 2018, we have released 90 percent of children to individual sponsors and of those sponsors, 41 percent were parents, 47 percent were close relatives, and 11 percent were other-than-close relatives or non-relatives.
There is a system of sponsor assessments that since early 2016 has been enhanced, according to Wagner:
In the area of home studies, ORR made two significant policy changes in March 2016. A home study is an in-depth investigation of the potential sponsor’s ability to ensure the child’s safety and well-being. The process includes background checks of the sponsor and adult household members, home visits, in-person interviews of the proposed sponsor and possibly interviews with other household members, and post-release services. The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA of 2008) mandates home studies in certain situations, but the March 2016 policy changes led to an increase in discretionary home studies, which are home studies that are not required by law. One of these policy changes focused on tender age UAC. ORR began requiring home studies for all UAC 12 years of age and younger being released to non-relative sponsors. The other change underscored the need for case managers and case coordinators, who have direct contact with UAC, to recommend home studies, even if not required by the TVPRA of 2008, if they think a home study would provide additional information required to determine that the sponsor is able to care for the health, safety, and well-being of the child.
Wagner also notes this improvement:
Another step in improving the safety of releases is to contact the child and the sponsor shortly after release, which is a critical adjustment period. To accomplish this, ORR initiated safety and well-being calls. A case manager contacts the child and the sponsor 30 days after release. The case manager confirms that the child is still residing with the sponsor, is enrolled in school, is aware of upcoming court dates, and, most importantly, is safe. If the case manager, or any other ORR grantee or contractor that has contact with a released child, has a concern about the child’s safety or well-being, they are required to take steps under ORR’s new “post-release reporting system for notifications of concern.”
And this is where the USA Today piece comes in. It fastens on this passage:
From October to December 2017, ORR attempted to reach 7,635 UAC and their sponsors. Of this number, ORR reached and received agreement to participate in the safety and well-being call from approximately 86 percent of sponsors. From these calls, ORR learned that 6,075 UAC remained with their sponsors. Twenty-eight UAC had run away, five had been removed from the United States, and 52 had relocated to live with a non-sponsor. ORR was unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475 UAC. Based on the calls, ORR referred 792 cases, which were in need of further assistance, to the National Call Center for additional information and services.
Of course, all the context is left out of the USA Today piece, which at one point falsely says, “the federal government has lost — yes, lost — 1,475 migrant children in its custody.” But these children weren’t in HHS custody. They were placed with sponsors that HHS vetted. It’d obviously be better if HHS could locate all of the sponsors in its follow-up. Some of them surely moved, and perhaps others, if they or family members are illegal immigrants, may not want to be in further contact with authorities.
I’m sure this program can be improved in all sort of ways, like all government programs. But the root of the problem is that unaccompanied children are showing up at our border, a situation that is fraught with peril. We should be doing all we can to stop that flow so a federal bureaucracy doesn’t have responsibility for finding adults to care for them, but the same people frothing with outrage over the USA Today piece have very little interest in trying to do that.
Okay, I thought, if I listed the adjectives I was feeling about or "missing" children, I might allay some of the rage and deep sorrow I have when hearing this past week's news. There is no doubt, in my mind, that this country is in a severe moral crisis. Above this rant, I have posted an article, which gives the basics of this massive problem alone. If you haven't heard this news, no surprise. Apparently, the administration has snuffed out more than the basic facts, to say nothing of any humanity. Early this morning, even Googling this news provided scant details. Yesterday, only the "tip of the iceberg" of details was available, in general. I hoped that by printing the words that I was feeling ...pretty extreme, for sure .... I might "vent" as they say. I'll print the list here, because that intervention did not work very well for me. But it did transform my energy into intention to use my skills to participate in action. Most of my descriptions of this event were, in my opinion: vile, egregious, ruthless, savage, inhumane, remorseless, nauseating, merciless, heartless, hateful, brutal, monstrous, barbaric, malevolent, nefarious, despicable ... just for starters. Throw xenophobic in there just for good measure. One paragraph reads: "In FY 2018, we have released 90 percent of children to individual sponsors and of those sponsors, 41 percent were parents, 47 percent were close relatives, and 11 percent were other-than-close relatives or non-relatives." (Look at the way the article minimizes that 90%.) Read that carefully, because one is tempted to read it quickly ... I know I did. Fifty-eight (58%) of ninety percent (90%) of the children were placed haphazardly and immediately into foster care, or anywhere other, than their biological parents. Having had much past exposure to the "real world" of "migrant children", the article is a bit "rosy" to the reality of these kids. To be sure, the intentions of the workers are pure. I would feel a just as described, but our system is overloaded which children who are basically abandoned for one reason or another. My memories were deeply painful in working with these children. One parent was told, "we have no idea where your children are", and the parents were sent back to their country. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself in that same position. I studied the emotions in myself which I was sure would be the same. If you are a parent, and can imagine your young child literally standing at a gate alone to seek asylum, just try to imagine your pain of separation; not knowing if you would ever see your child again.
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