Amid the uncertainty of 2020, I come to you today with a powerful tool for you and your loved ones that has demonstrated the ability to reduce your stress levels and improve your sense of wellbeing. ART! In 2018, an experimental study was conducted that indicated a significant drop in stress among participants who created art for 45 minutes.

At Be Strong Families, we know we can create the world we want to live in. Through the movements and stories we choose to promote, we can begin to foster a reality of vitality, connection, healing, and justice. 

As an outgrowth of our project “A More Perfect Union”, we have introduced a social media campaign called “AMPlify” that has been striving to blast out the work of others who are taking on the social issues of today and finding creative approaches to big questions. Peace is achieved through understanding of the other.  That is why we want to create opportunities to learn about one another and add humanity to complex world issues.

I’m a feminist, which means I understand that patriarchy circumscribes all relationships in our culture, and I tend to sympathize with women because of systemic and structural sexism. That’s a given. I’m also a white woman who grew up in the 1960s and 70s in a middle-income, suburban Philadelphia household where gender roles were fairly stereotypical: dad as a provider and protector, mom as the go-to day-to-day parent. I didn’t know my father as a nurturer. He claimed that the only emotion he allowed himself to feel was anger because that was one feeling he couldn’t control, and the others would make him soft.

Be Strong Families is pleased to announce that our new Recovering Together Cafés and the accompanying conversation deck are completed and ready to be deployed to support people on their journey to recovery. Combining the expertise of NET and Greater Tilton in the content area of addiction and recovery with Be Strong Families’ expertise in developing and sustaining meaningful conversations provided the opportunity for a collaboration that aims to have a significant impact on the journey to recovery.

We’ve been struggling to know what statement Be Strong Families should make in response to events of the past week. We called an impromptu meeting yesterday at 5 pm Central for our staff and our consultants to check in with each other, to remind us of resources available to assist with processing what’s going on as part of our EAP program, and to try to co-create a Be Strong Families public statement. We were on for two hours, listening, witnessing, acknowledging, appreciating, and supporting each other. We encourage other organizations to do the same.

So much is changing as we as a nation react and adapt to the COVID-19 quarantine. One major shift has occurred in education. Schools from elementary to post-secondary have closed their doors. Young children are learning from home. Parents are now tasked with facilitating their children’s education in all subjects, at all grade levels. Teachers and administrators are having to acclimate to an online curriculum, and to less interaction with their students.

…Now, that humming has grown faint and more of us are hearing societal questions that demand answers. As Be Strong Families thought about how to act, we realized that what we do best—develop transformative conversations that nurture the spirit of family, promote wellbeing and prevent violence could be an important contribution. By doing this, we could allow people to experience the emotional safety needed to share their feelings, gain support from each other, and brainstorm strategies and solutions to keep their families safe and strong…