Planning and looking forward to having your baby is a wonderful and exciting event. The life change that having a baby can bring often means having to think through all the adjusting and juggling it is going to take. The realization, however, is often very different from the expectation. Post Partum is particularly difficult when you have your new baby and you feel nothing at all. In some cases, you just want to be away from your baby. Some cannot cope with the crying or the sheer presence of the new baby. Some call it baby blues and some know they are depressed but feel they must somehow pull out…

Seeing the explosion of riots in London shows you how quickly things can change. Many of the traumas I have heard about from the women I work with have come about from nothing they did at all. They were simply 'there' at the time. The trouble is, being just 'there' may develop feelings and memories which may make a person want to shut down. The body is amazing in the ways it deals with trauma and many women make a good recovery. Others just simply disassociate. Many women do not even know they disassociate, they just lose time and memory. For some, it is a trauma coping mechanism but it…

I believe if a woman cannot be financially organized, then neither can she be emotionally organized. It shouldn't be surprising that when somebody feels they have been financially organized, to watch all this effort get wiped out is pretty devastating. Anything that batters a woman's self-belief system can send self-esteem through a tailspin and lead to serious bouts of depression and anxiety. The interesting thing about this is very often it sends women out on a spending episode, sometimes of manic proportions. It is quite common for women who experience various kinds of loss, including long term relationships, jobs, status, and self-identity to try to recover their self-identity through purchasing,…

As I work to help restore the lives of women suffering from depression, fear, and anxiety; I have noticed a pattern: a constant drive to buy.  A belief that the answer to everything can ultimately be purchased. I believe this need to purchase helps drive an individual’s willingness to accept debt in pursuit of self-definition. I have found, however, the very opposite to be true. A person is usually defined by what they choose to give up rather than what they choose to acquire. When a person’s body comes under an organic attack threatening life itself, a shift in priorities happens. Let's take a man many of us greatly admire,…

Since the loss of Amy Winehouse ten days ago, I have thought about the anguish, conflict, despair and pure pain her family will have to endure over the months and years to come. I know the feelings well having lost my own daughter, Julia, 13 years ago this week. No loss compares to that of your own child. You are never over it. You slowly and gradually learn to cope. Although Amy Winehouse’s cause of death is presently unknown, years of drug and alcohol abuse surely contributed to her untimely and tragic death. There are so many young women who experience depression, sadness, fear and anxiety. There are those who…

So the holidays are here again and for many of us we visualize it as a time of joy, happiness and release from work demands. We picture the perfectly decorated home, smiling family portraits, children singing and dancing around with glee, opening of ornately wrapped gifts, and carolers singing in perfect harmony on our doorsteps. If only it were that easy, right? The reality of this time is the stress and anxiety that is brought about with all of the event planning, home decorating, the school pageants, shopping, cooking and baking, finding the perfect gift (that is within our budgets which have already been pushed to the max), the family…

Okay, I'm sitting here surrounded by piles and piles of crumpled note paper. I have got to get this menu finalized. The only consistent item on each page is the turkey and now after talking to Gretchen, the official health nut in the family I'm not really sure if I should do an organic turkey or a regular turkey. To be honest with you I want lasagna! Now that will go over like a ton of bricks! I can see it now, all eyes glued to my beautiful covered roaster and voila! Lasagna. Yeah, that'll teach'em!!! Get back to reality Miriam. If you don't want heart attacks, World War III…

I had times when I just could not sleep. It was some of my most fearful times. I would go to bed hoping I would be able to fall into some kind of slumber and sometimes I would fall to sleep only to find myself awake at 1am with my mind racing about all kinds of things. I just wanted my mind to stop working so I could experience the pleasure of just one good nights sleep. It just kept alluding me. I tried everything but there I would be night after night wide awake. I felt so alone and things I would think of I could do nothing about.…

The last 10 years or so has produced a communication change of such phenomenal proportion. Lots of two dimensional responsiveness that has almost made body language become out of date, eye to eye contact an occasional expectation and the development of a good strong handshake something of times past. Over the last couple of years I have had a number of friends who have become victims of cyber bullying, but the fact is that it does not just remain bullying. One of my friends was embarking on a divorce when she suddenly started to receive a barrage of hate email from all kinds of email addresses. Turns out this was…