About a year ago I was asked to give a presentation to a large group of medical residents about what mindfulness is, and the benefits of practicing it. The retreat they were attending was about death and dying. The doctor who asked me to open the retreat was forthright in sharing that the previous years […]

It was a bustling night in the Children’s Emergency Department. I had just started my weekend shift as the Child Life Specialist on call. A Child Life What, you ask? I was 2 years into my new career, offering psycho-social support to patients and families for various emergency procedures like stitches, rehydration, enemas, casts, and […]

  It was eerily quiet one morning, which is an immediate alarm for a mother of all boys that something suspicious is going on. I found two-and-a-half-year old Gunnar in the playroom with a ring of chocolate around his lips. I surveyed the room looking for clues and found none. I walked through the house […]