​Keep reading if you would like to learn how to hold onto yourself with more integrity within your relationship and family dynamic and are curious how to navigate these relationship predicaments. At the end you can complete a questionnaire which may indicate where you could grow further in relationship and emotional maturity, and then access a free resource outlining steps to behave differently in those painful old relationship dynamics and how to hold onto your self more confidently.

Ever heard the term 'early intervention'!!.....

Healthy relationships and nurturing environments are essential for happy children, healthy adults and healthy communities.

It is now extremely clear how family dysfunction and relationship trauma in childhood lead to some of the worst health and social problems.

The ACE study is a groundgreaking study of the relationship between adverse childhood experiences, health care use, and causes of death. What started out as a study of obesity and poor health of some 17,000 adult particicants, has shown how far reaching negative childhood experiences stretch into ones future, seriously impacting health and wellbeing..... with enormous economic costs:
• Childhood health care costs
• Adult medical costs
• Productivity losses
• Child welfare costs
• Criminal justice costs
• Special education costs
etc, etc

It is not so surprising to learn that the amount of stress and traumatic events experienced in childhood exponentially compounds ones chances of developing the following health problems:
• Alcoholism and alcohol abuse
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
• Depression
• Fetal death
• Health-related quality of life
• Illicit drug use
• Heart disease
• Liver disease
• Risk for intimate partner violence
• Multiple sexual partners
• Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)
• Smoking
• Suicide attempts
• Unintended pregnancies
• Early initiation of smoking
• Early initiation of sexual activity
• Adolescent pregnancy

It is important to also remember that despite traumatic experiences in childhood, some children develop into resilient, healthy adults….. the key to such a positive outcome is a child’s access to close nurturing relationships.
 
Take The ACE Quiz

For more info on the ACE study

Hi friends,
The time has arrived for me to launch my website and the relationship services I provide the community. Along with the website is my living blog.....

Its living, as in its an ongoing co-construction between me and you, in our relationship with all the elements of this life. I will feel honoured if you join me in this.

Our body/ mind/ spirit, our significant relationships, our circle of acquaintances, our community, our society and culture, our political and economic systems, our natural environment, the planet and beyond are all dynamic systems that mutually influence and create beautifully balanced relationships we call ecosystems or, when out of balance, become out of control systems destined to dissolve.   

Every day in my work as a psychotherapist, relationship and family therapist, and social worker I see the symptomatic reflections of systems out of balance in people, families and the society they try to live in. I also see great power, spirit, resilience, integrity, and resourcefulness in the way they/we move through complex knots and stuckness, and rise above unconscious reactivity toward more love and awareness, more powerful choice and action and generally moving toward living life in more harmony.

This living blog will mirror my experience of living now, will log my daily fascinations, love, despair and gratitude's of living. 

I will share my reflections, ancient and contemporary wisdom, scientific research and current affairs on: living consciously, physical/ mental and spiritual health; intimate and family relationships, parenting, culture, politics and the natural ecosystems in which we belong.

Systems theory shows us how systems adapt and change in response to feedback loops from the environment in order to maintain stability and to keep living. For example, when children become teenagers the family system is forced to adapt, despite some challenges, most families move to a new level of functioning and continue growing. Natural ecosystems have adapted to changes in the environment for millennia.
However the current western political and economic system, with its fascination in continuous "growth" (which goes against the cyclic, interdependent nature of nature) is not paying attention to the feedback loops from social and environmental degradation, the polarisation of wealth and disadvantage.
Fundamental to this is the majority of the worlds people are blind to this feedback which government and corporations mask behind propaganda and ideology through their control of the media.
The world is sending us feedback that we need to respond to, to take us to a new level of global functioning, maybe or maybe not through political activism....
Maybe the first step is to wake up to these global issues and activate your heart, and how you live will be part of the change.

"The Net of Indra is a profound and subtle metaphor for the structure of reality. Imagine a vast net; at each crossing point there is a jewel; each jewel is perfectly clear and reflects all the other jewels in the net, the way two mirrors placed opposite each other will reflect an image ad infinitum. The jewel in this metaphor stands for an individual being, or an individual consciousness, or a cell or an atom. Every jewel is intimately connected with all other jewels in the universe, and a change in one jewel means a change, however slight, in every other jewel."
From The Enlightened Mind, by Stephen Mitchell