Today’s Sidebar focuses on trauma, healing from traumatic events, and the restoration of and reconnection with our authentic selves. Some of today’s articles and podcasts contain references to traumatic events. We have taken great care in how we have handled these stories. In an abundance of caution, reader/listener discretion is advised.

My Monsters are Real

Lightening struck twice for this lawyer when, in his law practice, he was exposed to an identical traumatic event that occurred in his family of origin when he was young. He describes his healing journey. Read more.

Frozen Slushies – Not Frozen Tweens

What began as a quick Practice Perspective about the perils of having an attorney as a legal client evolved into a thoughtful reflection on this lawyer’s childhood trauma and resolution. Read more.

This article is also a featured Sidebar Podcast episode: Frozen Slushies – Not Frozen Tweens. Listen here.

Mindful Moment

Are you inside or outside your window of tolerance? Read more.

This Mindful Moment is also a featured podcast episode: Window of Tolerance. Listen here.

How Childhood Trauma Leads to Addiction

Gabor Maté shares his theory about how childhood trauma leads to addiction in all forms. He posits that we lose connection to our authentic selves in order to maintain attachment to our caretakers. Healing from addiction is a process of reclaiming our authentic selves. Watch here.

Something to Consider

Episcopal priest and researcher Alice Updike Scannell (1938–2019) identified radical resilience as the ability to endure, grow, and thrive through adversity:

We usually think of resilience as the ability to recover from an adverse experience and pick up our lives where we left off. It is that too. ...But there are times when adversity permanently changes our reality and we can’t go back to the way things were. ...

Resilience then becomes the work of coming through the adversity so that, at least on most days, we see our life as still worth living. With this kind of resilience, we come through the adversity knowing that we’re still ourselves, even though things are very different for us now. I call this radical resilience.