Author Archives: Patricia Vriesendorp

Wanting to Help Fight Racism?

This document is intended to serve as a resource to white people and parents to deepen our anti-racism work. If you haven’t engaged in anti-racism work in the past, you can start now. Feel free to circulate this document on social media and with your friends, family, and colleagues. Here is a shorter link: bit.ly/ANTIRACISMRESOURCES […]

Using Our Imagination in Helpful Ways

In this time of restriction and in any time of high stress, our imaginations can run wild. Instead of letting our imagination run off to all of those scary places, which it is want to do, we can learn to guide it to helpful places and experiences. When we do so we can then access […]

Self-Love

In starting up the New Year, the first topic in our Women’s Group was self-love. Instead of setting unrealistic and high pressure new years intentions, I raised the question how would they like to connect with self love? What has gotten in their way? One description of Self-Love is found in an old Poem by […]

Women & Anger II

This week’s Women’s Group, we will be continuing with the theme of Anger. Last month, we explored who was or was not allowed to express anger, we gave a gesture and behavior to express our anger, which we acknowledged and ?yes?d.? We tried to recognize how our anger shows up, and touched briefly on what […]

Grrr…. Women and Anger!

In our everyday journey’s we encounter different feelings… sadness, boredom, joy, excitement, worry, fear… and ANGER. How often do you hear someone say.. “I am angry!”? How do you react when you do? Do you lean in and say.. “Really!… How interesting, do tell me more?” Or do you look for the nearest exit and […]

Biel #MeToo Tragedy II: Steps to Healing

In my previous Blog post, I raised questions and concerns about individual and community reactions to the case of a prominent Biel Businessman and father charged and convicted of inappropriate sexual contact with an intern he was supervising. When we, as a community, allow ourselves to have conversations non-judging and non-blaming conversations about such difficult […]

Biel #Metoo Tragedy I: Questions and Concerns

Recently news about a well-known business man in Biel, accused and convicted of having had repeated inappropriate sexual contact with one of the interns under his supervision, shocked the Biel community. Unfortunately, it is not the first, nor the last such case, and raises several issues which I think are important to address for ourselves […]

Letting in the Positive vs Practicing for Tragedy and Disappointment

How often have you been in a situation that you “should’ve” been enjoying but found yourself tensing up or imagining how it could go wrong? Ironically it is not only fear of things not-working out that can paralyze us in life, we can also feel just as threatened by when things go well!

Changing Perspectives: How do you view your story?

How often have you felt like you’re stuck? Not moving forward? Or thought you’ve failed to obtain what you were aiming for in the time you predicted? Have you felt alone and longing for purpose and connection? We can get lost in certain moments of our life, in stories that define how we see ourselves […]