This week we have a very special guest.

We are honored and privileged to welcome Mike Niconchuk.

I met Mike at the Boston Trauma Conference. I was so moved by his talks there that I invited him for an interview. Mike is a researcher, activist, author, hero and all around amazing human being.

I say hero because Mike works on the front lines, where raw trauma is happening live around him. Mike is also of a different generation than I. And his story about intergenerational transmission hails back to a different part of the world than mine. But I am also interested in all our commonalities.

Mike is also a founding member of the Salama Project, for those who may be as inspired as I am by him, and would like to know more or help:

https://salamaproject.com/

Everyone is talking about it, and it seems to be everywhere. I figure it is time for me to say at least a few words about AI. I admit I feel very mixed about it, but then that is true about so many relationships, people and things in this complicated world. My giving it a chance to show its merits is admittedly quite new. And my apprehensions about mechanization and de-personalization are quite old! It does appear to be here to stay, and it certainly is proliferating where I live.

The book I mention in the podcast is: Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age (2025) by Vauhini Vara. I didn’t love the book, but it is written from a writer’s standpoint and was thought provoking.

I am madly preparing for the Transform Trauma Oxford 2025 Conference that is rapidly approaching. Hope to see you there!

I was about five when they came out with color TV’s. We did not have one, and continued to huddle around the grainy old black and white for a long time. But I remember our dentist, who was a family friend, would sometimes have us over for dinner with his family on a Sunday evening. All I remember about those visits, is gathering around their spectacular color TV to watch Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.

I was enthralled by the intro’s. Vivid kaleidoscopic swirls of primary color, like a moving Jackson Pollack painting. I always loved color.

This week’s video explores how the neglect brain gets stuck in black and white. And what that has to do with the “three P’s”, helplessness and hopelessness. With the help of neuroscience we connect these dots.

In this episode we pay a brief visit to the big topic of regulation and its many meanings and manifestations, from "over-reacting" to getting somehow stuck in trauma states, and feeling baffled by seemingly senseless or erratic relationship patterns. So very much of it begins with early neglect. And although it may elicit shame and confusion, or great fatigue, it is not a "character flaw" or a "pathology," but one of the many unfortunate impacts of early neglect trauma. And it may take a lifetime to get as regulated as we would like. I know I am still trying!

As I mention in the podcast, many thanks to those of you who put your comments on the YouTube page. It is helpful to hear from you what "works" best, even if there is variation in what people want. It is helpful to hear them all. One person wrote about being interested in how to find the World Book Club. It is a very cool resource and concept, as well as an international community of readers. Look up BBC.com World Book Club, and you can find it.

Today video is a bit of a patchwork, bits and pieces of ideas I am sure I will develop, disarray of coming home from vacation, and trying to get organized to get back in the saddle. Hawaii is glorious. It is good to be home! Although it is freezing here in San Francisco, USA.

Apologies for the chaos of videos! Last week you got none, but this week you get two. Yes, trying to get organized. The plan is resuming in August, the blog on alternate weeks. Thanks as ever for your interest!

Mind and Body

Aloha everyone from glorious Kona, Hawaii, where I have the privilege to be this week. This video was made with a (real!) spectacular ocean view, not your Zoom perfect fake one!

Being on vacation clears the head at least to some extent from the overcrowding of the “usual” thoughts and even coming back to a place I have been at least 50 times, I notice different things: a different flower or bird, a new and exotic food…and I think more freely and further outside of the workday “box.”

Travel and jet lag has never seemed strenuous, nor has dramatic change of time zones… until now. This old body is not the same as it always was. Travel also invites the traveler to see many different bodies both en route to and at the destination. Here in Hawaii, partly due to weather, and partly due to culture, one sees a lot of skin, much of it tattooed, and of unabashedly all shapes and sizes. There does not seem to be the kind of body shame, “fat”-phobia or obsessive thinness. Well perhaps in Waikiki of “Surfin’ Safari” fame, (for those of us who are old enough,) where I have never been.

In this brief video, I ponder about disability, weight, aging and the ways I find myself feeling different and thinking about different things. Age obviously is inevitable and is in fact a privilege! Perhaps we can enter into it informed, even prepared. But as with many other things, it is process, and there is no precise recipe.

Let’s break taboo, speak openly about how rapidly we march through life. Body changes and identity, like neurons, continue to advance through the lifetime. In this week’s video, we take a rudimentary look at body, culture and attitude.

In this episode of All About Nothing, we welcome special guest Mariah Rooney. When there is trauma, neglect, violence and differentness, often family is lost one way or another. With Mariah we discuss families lost and found, new models created, and a wide world outside the box of what sorts of attachments are possible.

Thanks for joining us!

While we are all inundated with grief, horror, shock and injustice, I thought we might look for a ray of light. Here in San Francisco, I awoke to a rainbow spectrumed search light across the sky in honor of Pride weekend. It was a wonderful way to start my day.

The child of neglect, will readily default to a stance of “nothing matters.” It is a natural way to feel in a lonely world of disconnection. And a feeling we are up against as we strive to be more connected and to heal.

This week’s video is about the benefit of little shots of positive into the “field,” into the world. Even small things we can do to shine a bit of light. And often it is easy!

This one is a little shorter than usual. But next week you will get a long one! Meanwhile, keep it positive!