empowerment

04/03/2022

An Inspiring Visit to Kojonup

John Stanton and I headed down to visit Lisa Martello-Hart (Australiana Artist and Children’s Book Author) in Kojonup on Thursday, 17 February. We were invited to learn more of what was going on in the town and engage in various discussions with key community members that focused on […]
30/09/2021

Factors Facilitating Addiction Recovery: A Summary

Some of you will know that I run two other websites, one of which, Recovery Stories, focuses on addiction and mental health recovery. Over the period from March to August I posted about 100 articles on my blog, but had to stop for a time while I was […]
21/09/2021

Facilitating Healing at Carrolup, Part 2

I continue my article focused on the process of healing that occurred at Carrolup Native Settlement. These sections are taken from my eBook Connection: Aboriginal Child Artists Captivate Europe. ‘Prior to November 1946, the children had been closeted away on the Settlement. However, they were taken to the […]
20/09/2021

Facilitating Healing at Carrolup, Part 1

Some of you will know one of the main reasons I became involved with the Carrolup story was because of my interest in the healing of trauma and its consequences (e.g. mental health problems, addiction). I was looking for a story about the healing of trauma amongst Aboriginal […]
22/03/2021

Recovery Stories

I’ve recently spent a good amount of time working on my Recovery Stories website, in preparation for the publishing of my new eBook Our Recovery Stories: Journeys from Drug and Alcohol Addiction on 9th April 2021. I first launched the Recovery Stories website in May 2013, with the aim […]
20/01/2021

Key Factors Facilitating Indigenous Healing

When I first developed the educational healing resource Sharing Culture back in 2014, I did a great deal of reading about the healing of trauma and intergenerational trauma. I summarised what I considered to be 12 principles of healing, which are relevant to Aboriginal people here in Australia […]
12/01/2021

How I Came to Write About Carrolup, Part 2

Yesterday, I posted the first part of the Preface to my book Connection: Aboriginal Child Artists Captivate Europe, which told the story of how I came to be involved with Carrolup. Here is the continuation of the Preface, which describes my background and how it has influenced my decision […]
18/06/2020

Key Elements Underlying the Healing of Trauma

In our forthcoming book Connection: Aboriginal Child Artists Captivate Europe, I have written two appendices, one reflecting on The Trauma and the other on The Healing. In my last blog, I provided a section of the first Appendix, The Trauma: Reflections. Here, I include the first part of […]
02/06/2020

Why is the Story of Carrolup Important?

‘The first step in re-establishing healthy communities is to acknowledge and understand the impact of the colonial legacy on the lives of Aboriginal people today and the various pathways necessary for healing from historical trauma, using both cultural and contemporary understandings and processes.’ Pat Dudgeon, Helen Milroy and Roz […]
13/09/2019

The Four Stages of Recovery

I was looking through one of my other websites, Recovery Stories, yesterday. I came across a blog I posted in 2014 about an article on recovery from mental health problems by Mark Ragins. That blog is as pertinent today, so here it is: Mark is a leading recovery figure […]
09/05/2019

Community Building

Here’s an article on asset-based community development (ABCD) which I wrote some time ago for the Kinship Connections WA website. This approach can facilitate healing in a community. “Mental health is not a product of pharmacology or a service that can be singularly provided by an institution: it is […]
20/02/2019

Importance of the Carrolup Story

“The first step in re-establishing healthy communities is to acknowledge and understand the impact of the colonial legacy on the lives of Aboriginal people today and the various pathways necessary for healing from historical trauma, using both cultural and contemporary understandings and processes.” Pat Dudgeon, Helen Milroy and […]
26/01/2019

Our Carrolup Project

I thought it particularly appropriate today, so-called ‘Australia Day’, that I re-iterate what John and I are doing and what we are hoping to achieve with our Carrolup Project. Seventy years ago, Aboriginal children of Carrolup ‘reached out’ to white society with their beautiful landscape drawings. Their efforts, […]
09/01/2019

A Journey Toward Recovery: From the Inside Out

Some of you will know that I have worked in the addiction and mental health field for over 40 years, spending the first 25 years as a neuroscientist working on the brain neurotransmitter dopamine. I eventually closed my laboratory because I: (1) stopped believing in disease models of […]
08/12/2018

Recovery From Trauma – Judith Herman (Part 2)

In my Healing Blog postings, I’m going to use a lot of quotes and film clips of people who I consider to be experts in the field, people like Judy Atkinson, Bessel van der Kolk, Bruce Perry, Judith Herman, James Gordon, Karen Treisman and Gabor Maté. Their words are […]
04/12/2018

Recovery from trauma – Judith Herman

Judith Herman’s book Trauma and Recovery is a classic. Judith starts the recovery part of her book, in a chapter entitled ‘A Healing Relationship’, with some important insights into recovery and healing. ‘The core experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others. Recovery, therefore, is based upon the […]
09/11/2018

12 Principles of Indigenous Healing

When I first developed the educational healing resource Sharing Culture, I did a great deal of reading about the healing of trauma and intergenerational trauma. I summarised what I considered to be 12 principles of healing, which are relevant to Aboriginal people here in Australia and other Indigenous […]
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