“I had known the pain, and survived it. It only remained for me to give it voice, to share it for use, that the pain not be wasted.”
Audre Lorde
The experience of violence is shaped by shame and silence. We’ll hear stories about how silence and shame define the experience of violence for everyone involved: the victim, the perpetrator and the bystander, with a special focus on white bystanders and racist violence. We explore how violence is dehumanizing, and leads survivors to blame themselves. We also hear about the forces that make it difficult for victims and bystanders to speak up.This hour long show is about the power of overcoming shame and silence by telling the truth about violence. Through compelling stories and expert reflection, we explore how finding voice and bearing witness can become part of recovery for both individuals and communities.
                                                        
 
Tips & Strategies for Confronting Violence

“What if global warming isn’t only a crisis. What if it’s our best chance to build a better world?”
Naomi Klein
Reports of wildfires, hurricanes, and extinctions are frightening, yet we rarely hear people talking about the mental health impact of these changes. This hour long show explores how coping with the mental health impacts of climate change can actually make us more effective at combating it. We hear stories about the challenge of facing the facts, and emotions including grief, hopelessness, and fear. Finally, we consider how taking action can actually lead us to greater strength, connection, and impact. Safe Space Radio combines compelling storytelling with practical expert guidance to give you the tools you need to find your own courage.
                                                        
Tips & Strategies for Coping and Getting Engaged (PDF)
We’d love to hear from you! If you have a story about climate courage—or a comment for one of our guests—please leave us a voicemail at 617-600-8419.

“Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.”
George Eliot
This hour-long show is about the mental health benefits and challenges of saying a good goodbye at the end of life. Through stories, we explore different facets of goodbyes, including why so many of us avoid saying goodbye even in the most life-changing moments. We also discuss how initiating a goodbye conversation can make us more emotionally resilient long-term. We combine compelling storytelling with practical expert guidance to give you the tools you need to start your own difficult conversations.

Tips & Strategies for Saying a Good Goodbye (PDF)
We’d love to hear from you! If you have a story about saying goodbye—or a comment for one of our guests—please leave us a voicemail at 617-600-8419.

 
Courage is the choice to act even when we feel afraid. It forces us to confront fear, shame, and stigma—and to feel our own strength. This hour-long show is about how accessing our own courage also supports our mental health and well-being, exploring the experience of living with mental illness—such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder—as  a kind of “courage boot camp.” We also discuss how culturally-imposed silence can enforce shame and make accessing our courage much more difficult. Safe Space Radio combines compelling storytelling with practical expert guidance to give you the tools you need to start finding your own courage.
                                                        
Tips & Strategies for Accessing Your Courage (PDF)
We’d love to hear from you! If you have a story about mental health or mental illness—or a comment for one of our guests—please leave us a voicemail at 617-600-8419.

Many white parents have never learned how to talk about race and racism with their kids. Silence perpetuates racism—but it can be hard to know how to start. This hour-long program is about talking to white kids about race and racism: how white parents, families, and teachers can learn to show up for racial justice in a way that will make a difference for generations to come. The show explores a wide variety of approaches with kids of all ages.
Parents, racial justice experts, and teens all provide perspectives on these necessary and challenging conversations, with a focus on how white parents can actively interrupt the racist messages and stereotypes that children as young as three years old are already starting to pick up. We combine compelling storytelling with practical expert guidance to give you tools to start your own courageous conversations.

Tips & Strategies for Talking to White Kids About Race & Racism (PDF)
We’d love to hear from you! If you are a parent or teacher, and you have a story about talking to kids about racism—or a comment for one of our guests—please leave us a voicemail at 617-600-8419.

This episode is about loneliness: what it is, why so many of us feel it, and the surprising toll loneliness takes on our physical and mental health. The health effects of chronic loneliness are akin to smoking 15 cigarettes every day—it literally shortens our lives. Yet it can feel vulnerable to name it when we feel lonely. This show examines the risk factors for loneliness, the influence of social media, and how creative approaches to loneliness can leave us more connected and resilient. We also explore why two groups in particular—teens and the elderly—are most at risk for chronic loneliness. We combine compelling storytelling with practical expert guidance to give you the tools you need to start your own courageous conversations.

Tips & Strategies for Combating Loneliness (PDF)
We’d love to hear from you! If you have a story about loneliness or a comment for one of our guests, leave us a voicemail at 617-600-8419.

powerpress]
This hour-long program is about asking for help: why it’s so hard to admit when we need something from another person, and the surprising effects that sharing our vulnerability can have on our mental health. The episode explores how shame and stigma can prevent us from asking for what we need, why we tend to underestimate the generosity of others, and how asking can make us feel seen in both welcome and uncomfortable ways. Finally, we address the complicated experience of wanting to help to someone who can’t or won’t ask for it. We combine compelling storytelling with practical expert guidance to give you the tools you need to start your own courageous conversations.

Tips & Strategies for Asking For Help (PDF)
We’d love to hear from you! If you have a story about asking for help or a comment for one of our guests, leave us a voicemail at 617-600-8419.

We all make mistakes. Knowing how to mend our relationships is vital to the mental health of our families and communities. This episode is an exploration of apologies: why saying “I’m sorry” can be difficult, and how we can get better at repairing the relationships that matter the most. Through stories, this show addresses apologies after the #MeToo movement, and the pressure to forgive. It also chronicles the many ways a restorative justice process can change the lives of everyone involved. We combine storytelling with practical expert guidance to give you the tools you need to start you own courageous conversations.

Tips & Strategies for How to Apologize Well (PDF)
We’d love to hear from you! If you have a story about an apology or a comment for one of our guests, leave us a voicemail at 617-600-8419.

 

This hour-long special is about the unspoken challenges of caring for a family member with dementia. The show explores the experience of ambiguous loss, where the person is both here and not here at the same time. Through stories, we explore why caregivers have such high rates of isolation and depression and how difficult it may be to live with the fear of getting the disease yourself. Host Dr. Anne Hallward has lived with this illness in her own family and offers creative solutions that give hope, reduce stress, and build community.

 
“One of the hardest things you will ever have to do, is to grieve the loss of a person who is still alive.”
Anonymous
Follow the links below to more audio, information, and resources to support the caregiver you know.
Want to have a conversation?
Use these brief audio prompts to start a conversation about caregiving.
General Resources on Caregiving
Thanks to the Hope and Grace Fund for their Generous Support of this Project.

This show is about the courage of teenagers who come out at a time in life when it is hardest to be different. So many of the legal and social changes in this country that support LGBTQ civil rights are happening because one by one, year after year, thousands of young people dare to come out to their family and friends. Little by little, they open minds and hearts.
Follow the links below to more audio, information and resources to help LGBTQ teens, families, schools and communities.
“Harvey Milk always said that this was how the revolution would happen: one lonely kid at a time.”
from Love on the March, New Yorker, 11/12/12 by Alex Ross
Additional Important Topics:





LGBTQ Homelessness



Transgender issues



Gender Expansiveness



Faith Communities



Inclusive Curriculum




Resources:
Audio:
Discussion questions for Teens:

* What was it like for you to hear these stories?  What did you resonate with?  What could you not relate to?
* Were there important parts of your experience that got left out?  What are they?
* Who are the most trustworthy, and accepting people in your life?  Make a list. Can you go to them when things are difficult?  Do you?  If not, why not, and is this something you can talk to them about?

For the final show of 2016 and this season of Safe Space Radio, we revisit my 2011 conversation with Matthew Sanford. Matthew is a yoga teacher focusing on trauma recovery. He was paralyzed from the chest down at age 13 in a car accident that killed his father and sister. As a teen, he was encouraged to overcome the silence of his paralyzed body, but he learned that he could listen to it instead. Over time, he began to experience his body's silence as a source of strength and connection. He encourages all of us, as we age, to listen to the increasing silence of our bodies in new ways.

This week we go back to 2008 and the second episode of Safe Space Radio to revisit a conversation that remains so important to me: how (and when) to talk to your kids about sexuality. My guest Layne Gregory and I discuss the ways our parents were unable to give us the information we needed on the subject. Layne shares the strategies for navigating the subject of sexuality that she used with her own kids and gives 6 basic principles that are important for kids to understand.

This week we revisit my 2014 conversation with Ellen Jennings, who is the mother of a son with high-functioning autism. She talks about how long and difficult the path to his diagnosis was, and about the many ways she has had to push for him to get the services he needed and that have helped him thrive.

This week's show revisits my 2014 interview with Bobby Payzant, an inmate at the Maine State Prison. We discuss the crime for which he is serving time, and his work as a hospice volunteer, giving care to inmates dying in prison. Bobby's insights about the power of presence and open-hearted caregiving upended my notions of what it would be like to talk to someone convicted of a violent crime, and challenge the stigma our society places upon those with criminal records.

This week we present my 2012 conversation with Meredith Hall about her pregnancy at age 16. Meredith describes being shunned by her family and school and forced to give the child up for adoption. The experience was never acknowledged, and this silence left her alone and afraid for many years. Her memoir Without a Map explores how silence can be an impediment to healing.

This week I revisit my 2013 conversation with Episcopal Priest Carl Russell about the childhood sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his family's priest. Carl talks about the way that the priest gradually built trust with his parents and used that trust to gain access. He tells the extraordinary story of how he began to heal after hearing a radio story about sexual abuse in the Boston Archdiocese. You’ll hear how, at 72 years old, Carl was finally able to see justice when he pressed charges, and broke the silence that had plagued him all his life.

Today's show revisits my 2009 conversation with Leah Deragon of Birth Roots about her struggles with postpartum depression and anxiety. As a doula and a birth educator, it was hard for Leah when motherhood turned out to be so difficult. She discusses the pain of not feeling an instant emotional attachment to her baby, her anxiety over his breastfeeding difficulties, and her insomnia. We talk about the many unrealistic expectations new mothers face, and how normal it is to struggle in ways that aren't often discussed.

This week we revisit my 2012 conversation with Glenn Close about how and why she became an advocate for those with mental illness. Glenn's sister Jessie has bipolar disorder, which didn't get diagnosed for many years. Now they are working together to erode the stigma that prevents people with mental illness from getting the support, understanding, and treatment they need.

This 2013 conversation with Sheila Heen, faculty member at the Harvard Negotiation Project, was a fun one. Sheila and her husband, who are both experts at helping people talk through difficult disagreements, have opposing political beliefs. The interview is full of great advice on communicating respectfully and usefully when you disagree with someone, and explores the idea that when we listen receptively, we actually become more persuasive.

In this interview from 2011, I speak with Catharine Murray about how writing poetry helped her heal from a loss that initially felt unspeakable - the death of her 6 year old son. She explains how sitting down to write allows her to create a new space to work with her sadness, and she shares three poems that illustrate the evolution of her grief and her ongoing healing. Her story offers a novel approach to healing from all kinds of losses.